[brand0n]

hi i just got an ibook from my sister this week and its from 2001, a 500mhz model. i bought an airport card to use on my netgear wireless router and also bought jaguar. wiped the laptop clean and installed everything fine, the battery indicator on the top taskbar shows it at %100. the button on the battery itself when pressed shows only one light come on and it blinks. if i unplug the power cord the laptop might run for 5 minutes. is there a way i can cycle this battery maybe and see what the problem is? i hate to buy a battery since i just spent $230 on the card and os, then it turn out to be something else. maybe its not being supplied the juice to get a charge? im a new mac user so any help is appreciated.

[flgator]

You probably have a bad battery, but you can try this:

- restart the iBook while holding down cmd (apple) - s; this brings you to single user mode
- unplug the power cord and let the ibook just sit there and drain the battery; single user mode doesn't monitor the battery so it won't go to sleep
- once the iBook shuts down, take out the battery and leave the power cord unplug
- press the button on top of the headphone jack and hold down for 5 sec; this resets the power mangement
- plug the battery back in
- plug the power cord back in
- power up the iBook

See if that improves the battery life. You could repeat a couple of times, but you probably have a bad battery.

I have the same model iBook and had to recently replace the battery. I bought from Smalldog.com for about $130.

[brand0n]

thanks alot, i will give this a try