Defective Battery?

[Claudia]

hello,
my name is Claudia; I am a brand new MAC and laptop user. I have had my iBook G4 for a week. Two days ago the battery was low and my boyfriend was using it at that time. Instead of letting it completely die (as suggested in the iBook G4 manual to calibrate it) he fully recharged it. by the time i started using the computer yesterday i didnt know that had happened so i let the battery die and then i recharged.
Today, in a mere 30 mins my battery level has dropped to 87% while running everything on low (including brigthness level). When i was working with my computer before i could have the brightness on a regular level, run several applications (browser windows, iChat, other programs). It would take a long while for it to drop into the 80% so i was really surprised by the battery behavior this morning. I was wondering if this is normal or if i should call apple care?
I was also wondering if there is some sort of online FAQ book for newbies such as myself? i ran a google search and didnt find anything.
well thank you for your time,
Claudia G

 

[mkrishnan]

It honestly doesn't sound so unusual to me. Burning 13% of the battery in 30 minutes extrapolates to about 230 minutes to zero...that's not completely out of reason. You don't have to do the calibration thing every single time you use the battery -- I think the recommended frequency is just once a month or so, although I don't think doing it more frequently is a problem either.

How much battery life were you getting all the way to zero? It could be, that because it's relatively new, it hadn't been too well calibrated yet and it's still learning how to rate battery power, and so in the past, it had hung at larger charge indication (80-100%) for longer than it actually should have. In my experience the battery charge meter is very linear -- it isn't like a lot of cell phones where it hangs at 80-100% for two days and then goes from 80 to zero in two hours.

Also look at this, in terms of FAQs... Good luck!

http://www.apple.com/batteries/

 

[Littleodie914]

Yea, I agree with mkrishnan. At that rate, your battery holds a charge for approximately 231 minutes... That's 9 minutes short of 4 hours, which is quite impressive as far as battery life is concerned. How long were you hoping the battery would last?

 

[stevep]

Hi Claudia
Read your post 30 minutes ago, at which point I unplugged my new iBook 1.33 from the mains. From 100% it dropped to 89% - only running Safari, and some of the time the screen was blacked out as I was away from my desk. So, no worries.
I think the calibration procedure is only a software thing to make the battery indicator a bit more accurate. The batteries themselves are not like the old cadmium sulphide things which had memory problems, you should be able to charge them whenever you like more or less.

stevep

 

[Claudia]

Yea, I agree with mkrishnan. At that rate, your battery holds a charge for approximately 231 minutes... That's 9 minutes short of 4 hours, which is quite impressive as far as battery life is concerned. How long were you hoping the battery would last?

Well the battery had a charge of five hours before and ive only had the computer for a week so that is why i was worried that perhaps teh battey was defective in some way. But i guess thats just how it goes. I am new to the ways of laptops so i really have no clue what to expect. I just tnocied the difference. When it had five hours of battery life, i was running it on a more demanding setting than now.