I watch a lot of movies streaming online. Should I keep my computer on the power cord, or should I charge the unit completely, remove the power cord, then wait till it gets to a low battery and plug it in again?
My main concern is that if I keep it plugged in, it will degrade the life of the battery, but if I keep plugging and unplugging, it will cycle through the battery life anyways.
My question is essentially: Should I keep it on the charger when doing something that would cause the battery to drain faster than normal?
Best Answer
To get the most out of your MacBook's battery, follow the Notebook Battery advice from Apple: unplug and use your battery until empty about once a month, then charge back up to full. Your question expands a bit on another question on the site about general charging:
Should I disconnect my MacBook Pro's power cord when the battery is fully charged?
In your case, streaming video is usually a high power usage event that can drain a battery in 4 or 5 hours. You will therefore be more likely to have a higher recharge cycle count than someone that isn't using as much power. For that reason, I would try to keep it plugged in when running. Everything is a balance, and it would be hard to reach the 1000 recharge cycles design lifetime of the new batteries in Apple portables - but as long as you are once a month draining it down, you might be better off keeping it on power the rest of the time it runs just in case you reach that limit before you are done with using the Mac.