iBook G4... battery... Advice Please!

I have an ibook that I figured I had to replace because of non existant battery life, poor operation, etc.

But I got it some more ram, cleaned up the system and bought it a new battery and this things works fantastically now.

I use photoshop at 8.5 x 11 at 300 dpi with multiple layers and a huge wacom tablet(with an external hardrive as a scratch disk) and everything runs amazingly smoothly.

I bought my battery from OWC because they claimed the batteries they sold had a much higher lifespan.

They lie. The fine print confirms that it's only an increase in battery life over the 12 inchers. erg.

The batteries they sell work fine, but you might as well just buy a normal ibook battery at the cheapest price you can.

Anyways.

Don't get rid of it yet, buy a new battery and clean up the system. As long as the ibook still works there's absolutely no reason to waste a grand.

The only reason I would say to get the Macbook over a new battery is because I'm starting to notice more products coming out that are Intel only. The G4 is now the minimum requirement for Leopard, and by the next OS upgrade you might find yourself out of luck. Even worse is that most third party companies probably don't have as much desire as Apple to support PPC that much longer.

With that said, the G4 is still quite capable. The battery is a lot cheaper than the Macbook. I'm still using my iBook G4 as my only computer and aside from a little lag when doing a lot of photo and music editing it works great (on it's second battery). But if money isn't a problem, I'd say go ahead and upgrade.

I'm hoping someone will respond to this so I don't have to start a new thread. When your battery life is down to about 30 mins (on a g4 ibook) is it a sign that you are going to have to get a new battery or is there anything else you can do (changing the performace setting hasn't helped)?

I replaced my 14" iBook G4 battery after about 3-years of heavy use. It was down to apx 30-mins use. Bought a new one, got 4+ hours easily. That was a year ago. Best $$$ I ever spent on a computer!

questions said:

I'm hoping someone will respond to this so I don't have to start a new thread. When your battery life is down to about 30 mins (on a g4 ibook) is it a sign that you are going to have to get a new battery or is there anything else you can do (changing the performace setting hasn't helped)?

Click to expand...

You can reduce the screen brightness a bit but most likely to get any noticeable difference you need to replace the battery.

um..yeah

whenever my battery dies, i just buy a new mac. then i usually throw the old one in a wild life refuge. along with all my 6-pack rings for the cute little animals to play with. ; )

screen brightness, are you serious? Shouldn't you get more than four hours from a new battery? I guess I don't know that much about batteries, but I don't understand why they "die" over time (other than being designed that way so you have to buy at least a new battery)