[kzmk]

Hi, please bear with me -- I know what follows sounds... rather strange. Read on.

I own an iBook 1GHz. When it was new, it ran 10.3.x, and I managed to keep its battery going for 4 to 6 hours. This january, I upgraded to 10.4, and believe it or not, the battery started to drain faster. Down in 2 hours after the original installation.

At first, I blamed it on Dashboard, Quartz3D/2D/whatnot, and that the battery was getting old after all. However, during the course of the last months, the battery got so "bad", that it only stayed for a mere 6-9 minutes. Really. Fully charged, unplugged -- 6 minutes surfing the web, bamm.

Now... yesterday, I decided to get rid of the battery menu item, because I felt I wouldn't need it any longer. For the last 5 months the battery didn't last for more than 10 minutes anyway, "portable" was a thing of the past, dump that battery symbol. "poof" it went out the menubar.

I'm writing this post today, right now, after surfing the web for two hours straight, plug pulled, on battery. All I did was remove the battery menu extra from the menubar. I can see that (ads, ani-gifs, stuff like that) my CPU is working at 35% right now, and last week that would've meant "down in 7" or so. But today it's holding.

No battery extra, no battery drain.

Now, to make matters stranger still: Since I can't check the battery status on-screen, I thought I could check it "in hardware". But once I hit the check button on the battery itself (the one which lights up these green LEDs) -- one LED will light up, blink hecticly, bamm, battery off, 'Book goes into sleep mode.

Anybody else experiencing this? Could the menu extra really have that big a drowning effect? I always wondered how much influence the duration measurement had on the battery's endurance, but I never would've though it would impact it that severe...

Please excuse this rather lengthy post.
I'm still baffled by the sudden return of battery power, and I'm constantly awaiting a black screen or that warning popup... but the 'Book just keeps running.

[seanc]

I just think your battery is failing. You should check to see if it's covered in the recall so that you can get a new one.

[kzmk]

Yeah, it's covered, and I already registered. However, I've read quite some threads about similar "failures" when all that really seems to be happening is some sort of miscalculation which triggers an untrue draining. So to say.

Like... I drowned the battery shortly after sending the above post. It ran for WELL over two hours then. Compare that to 6 minutes the days, weeks and months before. And even though right now the battery info (terminal, coconut battery, energy savings control panel) reports the battery as "full/100%" -- which it did after 20 minutes of charge -- the ring on the power adapter is still glowing in orange.

Never acted like that before, when the battery menu extra was showing. Until yesterday, a "full" charge displayed in the menu resulted in a power adaptor glowing green.

I know it all sound highly unlikely, but to me, I'm not dealing with a defective/old battery, but rather with a defective battery menu item, which instead of only measuring/showing the battery's charge, effects the battery's auto-sleep trigger mechanism.

I'll observe this further in the next couple of days and weeks. Wonder if an old menu extra behaves differently.

[krx]

I'm no expert on this but it seems to me you have a plausible theory. Are you on 10.4.7? I ask because there seem to be a number of quirky problems w/this version (especially in relation to Safari...). From what you've reported here, the latest OS download does seem to have triggered the problem. Like you, I'd want to figure out what it is before spending money on another battery that will most likely suffer the same fate...

[kzmk]

Yeah, 10.4.7. But it was like that well before that particular update. So it may not *that* update, but simply *some* update -- with my iBook it was 10.3.9 to 10.4.0, with yours it may have been 10.4.6 to 10.4.7.