[Roberto Baldwin][1]:

> Cadex Electronics CEO Isidor Buchmann told WIRED that ideally everyone would charge their batteries to 80 percent then let them drain to about 40 percent. This will prolong the life of your battery — in some cases by as much as four times.

I bet he’s right, but why bother? As Buchmann mentions near the end of the article, it would be extremely cumbersome to do this. I actually poked around Keyboard Maestro a bit to see if I could whip up a warning system, but after about 10 minutes I gave up.

I looked up what it would likely cost to replace the battery on my retina MacBook Pro, the best data I could find was a year old, but listed the price as `$199` plus taxes. That’s about `$220` at the end of the day here. My battery life isn’t noticeably bad right now, but let’s assume that a MacBook Pro battery will only last the average person 2.5 years. That equates to an `$88` per year expense, or `$7.34` a month expense for battery life.

The point is this: would you rather agonize over when to start and stop charging your battery — having to remember to top it off when you know you might need a full battery — or would you rather just *use* your computer?

For `$7.33`, I’d rather just use the damned computer and take my chances on having to replace my battery sooner than I *might* have to replace it if I were being anal-retentive about monitoring the battery usage and charge percentages.

[1]: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/09/laptop-battery/