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StewBC · Jul 19, 2007, 12:58 PM

Hi,

My MBP is about 7 months old. I pretty much always run it on AC power. Once in a while, I will use the battery and only about twice or so did I run it till the battery was flat. Cycle count on the battery is now 32 with the last 4 or so cycles from my attempts to figure out what's up in the last couple of days. Based on things I saw here (http://forums.macnn.com/69/macbook-p...-battery-when/) and elsewhere, I thought that I didn't have to deep cycle or remove it.

My battery is now hosed. It will report 60% or so power and then the Mac will just spontaneously shut down (as in drop dead, no warning, no sleep). When you press the button on the battery, 3 of the 5 lights light up. The time it took to die will be about right to get to a 60% charge. If you turn the Mac on, it may power up and will just die again after seconds. Then it will fail to start until you put it on power. At this point, the battery indicator in OS X will say 0% (with 3 lights on still when you press the battery button).

I have done this a few times (run till death), which is what is suggested for calibration. I have reset the PMU, PRAM and NVRAM. A different battery works perfectly, though so it's the battery for sure.

Seems to me a deep cycle is actually required once in a while, or I must have a dud (6 months old and less than 30 cycles?). Anyone have some thoughts on this?

alainmeyer1 · Jul 19, 2007, 01:40 PM

Well I think it's a battery malfunction, because considering my old Powerbook was 2 1/2 years old with around 200-300 cycles and had 80% power.

PEPPERRULES · Jul 20, 2007, 12:00 AM

Your battery is defective. With fewer than 30 cycles it should be working well. Contact Apple for sure.

iREZ · Jul 20, 2007, 01:30 AM

its also a good idea to take your battery out if your constantly running on ac power (ie. weeks at a time).

StewBC · Jul 20, 2007, 01:13 PM

I should have looked at the Apple support site. t's right there:

Apple has recently discovered that some batteries used in its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks may have battery performance issues.
Affected batteries will have one or more of the following symptoms:
* Battery is not recognized causing an “X” to appear in the battery icon in the Finder menu bar.
* Battery will not charge when computer is plugged into AC power.
* Battery exhibits low charge capacity/runtime when using a fully charged battery with a battery cycle count (as shown in System Profiler) of less than 300.
* Battery pack is visibly deformed.

Third one being my problem. Not sure what the software update (which I have installed) is supposed to do. Off to an Apple Authorized Service Provider I go!

Eriamjh · Jul 21, 2007, 10:36 PM

Originally Posted by iREZ

its also a good idea to take your battery out if your constantly running on ac power (ie. weeks at a time).

If you do this, your MacBook Pro will drop to 1GHz and run much slower. Don't know why Apple does this. If the adapter isn't powerful enough to run the computer, how can it do that AND charge the battery at the same time?

MacBook and MacBook Pro: Mac reduces processor speed when battery is removed while operating from an A/C adaptor

SEkker · Jul 22, 2007, 03:07 PM

I have a 1+ year old Macbook pro, and my battery has suddenly started going from 60% to 5% in almost no time at all.

I have a backup battery, and I believe it showed the same symptoms last night.

I am wondering if this is a mac os 10.4.10 software problem - I do not recall this happening when I was running 10.4.9.