Best usage for a laptop being used as a desktop without removable batteries
- by Senseful
After reading the information on http://batteryuniversity.com, I realize that one of the best ways to permanently damage a lithium ion battery is to use the battery at a high temperature while it's fully charged. This is exactly what happens when you use the computer as if it were a desktop computer, since leaving it plugged in will keep the battery at 100% and using the computer will heat up the battery. This is why it's recommend to remove the battery from your laptop if you are using it is this scenario.
My question is what would you do if the laptop doesn't have removable batteries (e.g. a MacBook Pro)?
Should I use some kind of charge cycle such as: charge to 80%, unplug the power chord, use the laptop until it reaches 20%, then repeat the cycle by charging to 80% again?
If so, which values should I use instead of 80% and 20%? (I think charging to 80% is better than 100% because of the damage that a hot battery at 100% can do, but I just made the figure 80% up, and I'm sure there's a better number to strive for which is backed by science.)
I've read many of the articles on batteryuniversity.com, but couldn't find anything pertaining to this.
Update: What about doing something like charge (or discharge) it to 50%, then plug it in and turn on settings which use the battery as much as possible (e.g. brightness all the way up, wi-fi on, etc.), in order to try to maintain the battery at 50% (i.e. the rate it is charging is the same as it is discharging). This will probably heat up the battery, but would make it so you don't need to constantly plug and unplug the laptop. The one bad thing is that you are taking up more charge cycles which would decrease the battery life, thus I'm not sure this is a good idea.
