Does removing the battery slow down the processor speed by half on a late 2009 Macboo

Hi, today I went to the apple store because of a bulging battery that was casuing my trackpad to stop clicking. After being told that Apple does not replace bulging batteries (mine was 3.8 years, 272 cycles, 86%) since it's normal behaviors for them to expand, I had the battery taken out for the time being (didn't want to have more expansion damage, however normal that was. The technician reassured me that using the macbook without the battery with just the AC adaptor (60 watts) plugged in should not impact the computer's performance in any way, even though I read that doing so would lead to the prosessor slowing down to half its speed. He checked this info and said it wasn't true for my model, only for the macbook pros that should occur. So, I had the battery taken out and came home.



The macbook, however, is moving very slowly at this point: the keyboard slow to react, the cursor not as sensitive, programs taking longer to open, and webpages taking at least an additional 5-10 seconds to load than usual. I called back to the apple store and spoke with the techinician, who once again double checked with his coworkers, who all confirmed that for my particular macbook any type of slow down is not supposed to occur.



Yet, it's so freaking slow. I am using it. I know.



Can anyone shed some light on this? Does removing the battery cause this particular model macbook to slow down or not?



I am now afraid that even if I do buy a new battery, it will be at this speed from now on and no one able to tell me why.......(can you tell after 18 years of being a hardcore apple fan I've lost so much faith? what is going on with them these days?)



Thanks so much.

Thanks for the quick reply! Unfortunately they refused to give the battery back to me once it was removed, citing that it was a safety issue now that the battery was taken out. I was there for hours, talking to three different techs and one manager. Nope, they would not give it back to me. At this point I don't have it in me to fight anymore. I just won't buy another apple computer.

So now I am home and using this macbook without the battery and just the AC adaptor. It is so incredibly slow I could cry. Everything takes longer to open, load, or even just to switch between tabs. I don't understand......if this is not a battery related issue....then what happened? It was definitely not this slow last night!

An update for the situation:

Yesterday I went to the apple store and referenced them to the one article that's still viable and suggested that they check if that's the reason why my macbook slowed down so much. The genius intially agreed with the possibility but went to the back to check something. After he came back, he was firm that it could not be battery related but instead must be a software issue. From there he reinstalled my OS X, and that didn't work, so he wanted to erase (everything) and reinstall, and that didn't work. At that point I was in the store for almost five hours and asked him plenty of times during if he was sure it was software issue and not battery related, since it just seemed such a freaky coincidence that software should act up at this point, right after the battery removal. He was POSITIVE. So, imagine the look on his face when the erase and reinstall didn't work at the end of those five hours. He then asked me if he could take the machine to the back to run "other tests". I asked him what he was going to do, and he said probably check the hardware also.

When he finally came back, it was confirmed: it was indeed because of the battery removal that the computer slowed down so much. I was there almost 6 hours at this point.

The good news is he was nice enough to give me a free battery, since it was such a fiasco. From the way he talked it seemed that he actually thought it was the battery as well, but the "people in the back" just kept telling him no way, and he had to do what they said first. I thanked him for giving me a free battery. All is well now.

So all that to say: APPLE TROTTLES YOUR CPU IF YOU USE THE MACBOOK WITH BATTERY REMOVED, POWER PC AND INTEL ALIKE, AT LEAST FOR UP TO THE LATE 2009 MODEL.

Sebct said:

It's a well known fact that by removing the battery from early models of the MBP (maybe even the later ones) that the CPU drops to half power to prevent damage if the power cable is unplugged whilst the machine is running.

Click to expand...

I thought so.....but the geniuses (not one, but five, plus however many in the "back" those five consulted with) really wanted to prove that wrong.

They couldn't.