Calibrating your batteries is important to making sure you get a good amount of time running with it.

The Apple support site has a good article on how to calibrate your MacBook/MacBook Pro’s batteries.

From the Apple support site.

PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD), MacBook (all models), MacBook Pro (all models), MacBook Pro (17-inch) (all models) and MacBook Air

The battery calibration for the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) and any model of MacBook or MacBook Pro has been updated because of a new battery released with this computer. With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.

2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.

3. Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.

4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.

5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.

6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

View the complete article here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Calibrating Your MacBook/MacBook Pro’s Battery

For those who don’t watch Apple everyday like me or for those who don’t really keep track of the release dates, news and rumors, MacRumors has graciously put together a buying guide to aide us in our buying decisions. If you’re in the market for a new Mac, check it out. It might just save you the heartache when you buy a Mac and a few weeks later it has been replaced by a newer model.

Thanks MacRumors! I guess I’ll wait a few more months… Well I have no choice.

Post from: EveryJoe

MacRumors Buyers Guide

Ed Eubanks Jr., from Low End Mac has a great article titled “11 Ways to Optimize Your Macs Performance“. This article is not exclusive to PowerPC users. Most Mac users will be able to benefit from this article but probably not all in the same degree.

I’ve done most of these things such as clean my start-up items, shut of all widgets I really don’t need and to a certain extent clean up my hard drive. I also use Onyx from time to time.

So go ahead and read the article and see how much more performance you can get out of your Mac.

Post from: EveryJoe

Optimize Your Mac

In any case, my iBook G4 (three years together and still going strong) is wrapped in bond paper and electric tape to protect the unwanted stuff coming into my battery connector pins.

Post from: EveryJoe

My iBook is now a desktop replacement

Funny too, because Terry Bradshaw and Kathy Bates (I loved her from Misery) were the “oldies” using a Dell laptop from their kitchen.

So what’s this? Young kids use Macs and old (yet cool) folks use Windows?

Post from: EveryJoe

Failure to Launch and Macs

I’ll give it to Apple – they made the migration from PowerPC to Intel almost seamless. But.

Before the presscon I was having a conversation with Junior Tan, the guy from Apple Singapore in charge of the education apps. We were talking about the new Macs, specifically the MacBook Pro which was the next big thing in mobile computing. Dual core, built-in iSight, 4x faster than any notebook available.

Then he goes, “but I’m having such a hard time letting go of my PowerBook.” And I look down and see my own little white 12-incher that has saved my ass from being fried several times.

Man, it’s hard to replace a good thing.

And that’s the moral of this post.

Post from: EveryJoe

Old PowerPC Magic

I don’t know about you, but for the better part of my wireless life I’ve always enjoyed the benefits of a wireless connection coupled with friends to share it with. Nope, I don’t mean an open WiFi network. I’m talking about social WiFi.

WiFi as a social concept, at least here where I’m from, is null and void. On many occasions where my friends bring portables to a coffee shop, the buzz of conversation dies down being replaced by the muffled clicking of their trackpads.

I guess the best place to start is going wireless in a pizza joint. Social food is always good. That’s Adel and myself with our Powerbook and iBook chatting, downloading stuff and sharing photos while waiting for our pizza.

For some strange reason, it’s more fun to socialize when you have a transparent Apple logo on the back of your ‘book.

Post from: EveryJoe

Social Surfing

Specifically, we were discussing the age-old question of plugging in, and when and when not to. My brother believes that one should charge the laptop, and once it’s topped up, unplug and use at will until such time charging is once again required.

On the other hand, I am of a mind to keep the laptop always plugged in if there is a socket handy, whether or not the laptop needs it (and in these days of trickle charging lithium-ion batteries, it isn’t the problem it used to be). I will only be unwired if the situation will make it necessary.

Both reasonable points of view, right? Here are the more detailed arguments:

I do my thing because it keeps me prepared for whatever working environment will pop up in the day. In the event I need to work, say, in the park, or in the car, or at a cafe where some parsimonious manager says I cannot plug in, I can maximize my power usage and work for as long as possible.

My brother argues that laptops, by their very nature and reason for existence, are meant to be used without wires, at all times, and be plugged into a socket only when it needs to. That is why they are called mobiles. If you’ll be plugged in almost all the time, they why even use a mobile computer? Get a desktop.

Being just the only two siblings in the family, of course we draw the line in the sand and argue our points to death, a time-honored tradition that dates back to when we were arguing as toddlers who gets the bigger slice of birthday cake, regardless of whose birthday it was.

Working unplugged all the time bothers me greatly. Being forced to makes me antsy, and the first thing I do at Starbucks is head for the tables closest to the power outlets, and if they are already occupied I become royally pissed. (I think I am obsessive-compulsive about this whole thing. That’s why I got the extended battery I wrote about in a previous post, even if I could survive on the older one.)

Just the idea of unnecessarily increasing the charge cycle count and eventually shortening the useful life of an expensive battery disturbs me. Working in a place where there is a perfectly useful outlet handy and not using it is an idea alien to me. And the idea of my Powerbook going dead at Starbucks for no good reason while I’m trying to beat a deadline is something I cannot stand. It doesn’t just make sense to me.

Despite all these logical arguments, amazingly, a considerable number of people I know still have not gone past the novelty of working unwired, or simply don’t care what their battery status will be later on in the day. Even my co-blogger here at The AfterMac, Jayvee, often works at our magazine office – amidst a sea of ready-and-waiting power outlets – on his single iBook battery. I wouldn’t be too concerned if he had an extra one in his Crumpler, but he doesn’t. (Then again it might be because he’s afraid to use that funky duckhead he posted about earlier.)

In the end, as a positive sign of how mature we’ve become since those birthday cake days, my brother and I just agreed to disagree, and just continued to wordlessly stare out at the sea of cars, thinking about how we both needed a life.

What do you guys think? Comments are welcome.

Post from: EveryJoe

Power corrupts