[chrisford]

Hello all -

I noticed before the 10.3.8 update that the battery life of my aluminium 12" PB (1gHz model) had decreased significantly in a short space of time.

Normally, I would be able to get 2.5 - 3 hours on battery at my usual settings. At some point, however, this has reduced to a little over one hour.

When I updated to 10.3.8 this was reversed again and I thought everything was back to normal. After a few weeks, tho', things are back to c. 1 hour on battery.

Can anyone comment on this? I know that batteries do lose charge over time, but this seems a little premature and was certainly very abrupt.

Any help or comments much appreciated!


Chris

[ism]

I can only say I'm on the exact same model and haven't noticed any significant changes with updates to the OS. (10.3.8 here as well).

You could try Capacity Meter to try and get some info about your battery?

[jmagic]

i have a 15" rev C, and have noticed no difference in battery life since 10.3.8

[spacedog]

It's possibly related to software, but don't rule out a generally flakey battery. I just replaced the battery in a 1GHz 12". Over the span of a week or so, the unit's fully-charged-to-completely-dead time dropped to below 30 minutes. Couldn't find any obvious reason for the problems. PMU resets and the like didn't have any effect. A new battery did the trick, though.

Hope you find the cause...those little things are expensive!

[iREZ]

How long do you get with your new battery spacedog. Only reason I'm asking is to see if Apple started suppying batteries with a new cell technology.

[spacedog]

it's not actually my machine so i can't say for certain, but i think it's up to a normal ~3 hours depending on usage.

[chrisford]

Hello all -

Thanks for your comments - I'm thinking that this may just be a poor battery.

One quick question - are there any maintenance activities I should undertake before I reach for the credit card? Any advice on what (and how!) to check things would be great.

Thanks again all!

Chris

[iREZ]

Open up terminal, copy and paste this and hit enter
ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo
copy and paste all the info that comes up after you get you batt results (make sure your battery is unplugged when you do this procedure).

Couple of other things you could do is calibrate your battery, you do this by running your battery all the way down till your computer forceably sleeps giving you no option other than plugging it in. When you plug it in, charge the batt all the way up to 100% before unplugging it. After this, shut down and reset your PMU (I think its holding down option-ctrl-shift-power button down for five seconds....but I'm not sure if the apple key is involved as well, I hold down all the keys left of space bar except the fn key-shift-power for five seconds...don't press the fn key while doing this). Start up your PB, might be a good idea to reset your PRAM as well, and see where that leads you.

[chrisford]

Originally posted by iREZ:
Open up terminal, copy and paste this and hit enter
ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo
copy and paste all the info that comes up after you get you batt results (make sure your battery is unplugged when you do this procedure).

[Snip!]

Thanks iRez - that's exactly the sort of advice I was hoping for. Will try it, and report back as / when things change.

Again - thanks all for your help!

Chris

[iREZ]

I mean for you to copy and paste that info here on the forums so we could see if it is indeed your battery or powerbook. Here's what my book looks like (I get about 3-3:30 with my backlight on second to lowest setting.
"IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=3600,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=225,"Current"=3564,"Voltage"=12435,"Flags"= 838861829,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200})

[bitjumper]

I'm having the same problem with my 12" PB 1 GHz (Rev B). It is 1 year + 4 months old.

The battery status is:

| | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=1393,"Amperage"=1844674407370955023 6$
| | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=1393,"Amperage"=184467440737$

When new, I was getting over 3 hours of time, sometimes near 4 hours. Now I'm lucky if I get 45 minutes to an hour.

I feel it is deterioating rather quickly. A full recharge reports only 0:55 minutes. And I think that is being rather generous. After sleep (over night) I get only maybe 5 - 10 minutes of power.

I've occasionally done a battery recalibration with no improvement.

Erik

[bitjumper]

I'm having the same problem with my 12" PB 1 GHz (Rev B). It is 1 year + 4 months old.

The battery status is:

| | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=1393,"Amperage"=1844674407370955023 6$
| | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=1393,"Amperage"=184467440737$

When new, I was getting over 3 hours of time, sometimes near 4 hours. Now I'm lucky if I get 45 minutes to an hour.

I feel it is deterioating rather quickly. A full recharge reports only 0:55 minutes. And I think that is being rather generous. After sleep (over night) I get only maybe 5 - 10 minutes of power.

I've occasionally done a battery recalibration with no improvement.

Erik

[iREZ]

Yeah your battery capacity is really really low. I'd compare it to other people in the Battery thread thats floating around in this forum (you might have to do a search). Just compare your capacity to my capacity...I'd call up Apple and see if they could do something for you, if not looks like you need a new battery.

[chrisford]

Have checked my capacity and I'm a fraction under 1800. My PB is also about 1.5 years old, and I'd assumed that the life of the battery would be better than this.

I've tried the 'run-down-to-flat-and-restart' method, and reset the PMU. This gained me about 25 mins on battery, so is well worth trying if you have a slight battery life reduction.

Thanks to everyone for help and comments - I think it's time to call Apple and try to wheedle a new battery out of them!

Chris

[Wiskedjak]

The battery on my iBook 600 started to die in Sept of '04. I contacted Apple and all I got out of them was that batteries only have an expected life of about 3 years and that it is not unrealistic for it to be dying. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed looking at my 9yr old Tecra that still gets 1 hour out of it's original lithium-ion.

My battery is now completely gone; the iBook doesn't even recognize that one is present. However, a month ago I got lucky; a store was clearing out all of it's Mac stuff and I was able to score two new batteries for the price of one. One is still wrapped and the other only gets used when I'm mobile, which is only about 10% of the use time for my iBook ... 90% of the time I'm using it is at the desk/on the couch plugged in with the dead battery serving only as a spacer now and saving the good batteries from useless charge cycles.

[Kajo]

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
The battery on my iBook 600 started to die in Sept of '04. I contacted Apple and all I got out of them was that batteries only have an expected life of about 3 years and that it is not unrealistic for it to be dying. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed looking at my 9yr old Tecra that still gets 1 hour out of it's original lithium-ion.

My battery is now completely gone; the iBook doesn't even recognize that one is present. However, a month ago I got lucky; a store was clearing out all of it's Mac stuff and I was able to score two new batteries for the price of one. One is still wrapped and the other only gets used when I'm mobile, which is only about 10% of the use time for my iBook ... 90% of the time I'm using it is at the desk/on the couch plugged in with the dead battery serving only as a spacer now and saving the good batteries from useless charge cycles.

Just a word of warning. I had a TiPB that I had two batteries for. I constantly used the one waiting for it to die. Eventually it kicked the bucket after about a year and I switched over to the other battery only to find that it was completely gone. The battery that had done nothing but sit would not even take a charge or allow a reset. You might want to run a charge through both batteries every once in a while just to "refresh" them a bit. And again, I am sure there is no scientific evidence to back my claim but it's just what I noticed.

[iREZ]

He's got a point. Just because you don't use your battery doesn't mean it's not wasting in the background. If you want to do what your planning on doing (using the second battery when the first runs out), I would suggest you sell the second now and leave the money in a jar....when "buy new battery" time comes out, you go out and get a fresh battery that you wont have to worry about.

[Wiskedjak]

Thanx for the warning!