Why calibration by Mitch Scheffler,
Elementary Tech Support Westside Community Schools Omaha, NE.
At the moment we have around 500 iBooks in the hands of students at the elementary level. They spend the nights stored in laptop carts so the batteries can charge, but they never get recalibrated as part of any routine maintenance. So when a complaint comes in that a battery is no longer holding a charge I replace the battery and bring the one in question back to my office to test it in the charger and see if it just needs recalibrating. Also, Apple sends the new batteries at 50% charge and recommends they be calibrated during the first week of use. So I like to calibrate a new battery before I send it out for use. For the most part I can make due with just one calibration bay, but next year we will be buying the high school students new computers which will put close to 2,000 used iBooks in my lap to redistribute to elementary use. Very few of the high students take the time to calibrate their battery which will leave me needing to recalibrate several batteries over the summer break before the iBooks go back into circulation. MacBook reason: According to Apple documentation the MacBook battery is a new beast. To calibrate the battery they recommend fully charging the battery, leaving it fully charged for 2 hours, then unplugging it and using it until the battery is so drained that it puts itself into sleep mode, then leave it sit like that for at least 5 hours, then plugging it in and fully charging it again. That's about a minimum of 10 hours just to calibrate the battery using the MacBook to do the job. We just bought all of the teachers in our district MacBooks. Few will take the time to calibrate their battery every few months as Apple suggest so it's nice to have the new battery calibrated and ready to go before we give it to them. We also have some MacBooks in laptop carts for student use that will never get calibrated unless we bring them into the office and put them in the charger. On another note: The high students turn in their computers during summer break so we can install new software. Next school year close to 2000 iBooks will get replaced with MacBooks. We've discovered that letting a MacBook battery sit unused on the shelf for a few months is more than enough time for the battery to loose its charge and get so low that it will never charge again. We are currently trying to figure out how we'll keep 2000 MacBook batteries from dying off over summer break while they sit on the shelf.