Notebook Batteries Come Bad?

[maracz]

What I have been told is that batteries eventually get less and less charge on them. Sometimes on eBay someone who has used an iBook for a long time and travelled alot will explain that their battery only holds at maximum a 30 minute charge.

How much time does it usually take until a significant portion of your charge is gone (in months/years) with just normal use? Also, is this covered by Applecare? If so how low would the charge have to go before Apple replaces the battery?

[CMillerERAU]

All I can say is that many of the old batteries (pre-lithium ion) would develop something called "memory" where if you didn't completely discharge a battery it would decrease its life until you completely discharged it and then completely recharged it. Isn't this what the battery reconditioner program on the old 500 series powerbooks did? I'm not sure, I've only played with friends laptops so I don't have much personal experience. Though modern batteries shouldn't have memory issues all batteries tend to only last about 2 years before they start to loose charge. And no, AppleCare shouldn't cover normal wear-and-tear like that unless it lost it's charge in an ususualy short amount of time (months, not years).