Battery Care 

• Avoid extreme heat (and cold). When the environment is too warm, your laptop fan will kick on to keep the processor cool. Plus, heat isn't good for your battery or your laptop.  Make sure your laptop's exhaust vents are not blocked, or else heat will build up inside the laptop.  Always make sure your laptop is powered down or asleep before placing it in your case.  Operate your MacBook Pro as near room temperature (72° Fahrenheit) as possible, and only in an environment where the temperature is between 50° and 95° Fahrenheit.  Don't leave it locked in a trunk, especially when the weather is on the warm side (most of the year here in Pensacola!).  You should store your laptop in a place where the temperature is between -13° and 113° Fahrenheit.

• Give your battery a frequent workout - keep its juices flowing!  Ideally, you should be using your notebook daily on battery power, and then plug it in at home or at a charging station to charge.  TRY NOT TO EVER STORE YOUR NOTEBOOK WITH A COMPLETELY DISCHARGED BATTERY.  Doing so could cause the battery to fall into a deep discharge state, which would render it incapable of holding any charge.  You can fully discharge and recharge your battery once a month, but not more often than that.

Top 10 Battery Best Practices

• Check your display brightness. 

• Check your keyboard illumination.  

• Turn down the volume. .

• Close unused programs. 

• Be streaming savvy. Streaming music and video can quickly deplete your battery. Only use them if you know you'll be able to charge your battery later in the day.

• Watch for processor intense programs. Some programs, like iMovie and Garageband, use a lot of your computer's processor power.  Try to use these programs only when plugged in to a power source. Making your background image change more than once every hour or using an animated screensaver can run your battery down quickly.

• Cut down on external devices. Using an external mouse, hard drive, or other device means that your USB or Firewire ports are using power.

• Watch your battery status (but not too closely). Keep an eye on the battery icon. If you see that your battery is draining faster than it should, look to the tips above to lengthen your battery life. Set your battery icon to show only the icon, not the % or the time (both of these make your computer continually check the status which uses more battery power).  You can also keep an eye on the battery indicator lights on the left side of your laptop.