i think my battery is done for

[gelatin]

when i take out my charger the laptop lasts just over an our then without warning even before it gets near 0% it puts it self to sleep til i plug the charger back in

i dunno how it got so bad,where is the cheapest place to buy a new one for my ibook g4

 

[Eraserhead]

Fastmac?

 

[russed]

an hour - thats good in comparison to mine - i get the grand total of about 15 mins with my brightness as low as it can go and only wireless on!

it only holds 11% of the initail capacity!

 

[Makosuke]

Usually if you do the battery calibration procedure recommended by Apple you can at least get it to tell you accurately how much time you've got left, so you don't get "sudden" sleeps. Sometimes this can even recover some of the "lost" battery capacity, although I wouldn't get my hopes up.

For an older laptop an hour really isn't that bad (heck, I borrowed an older Dell laptop from somebody that literally wouldn't last 5 minutes on its battery), but if it's not long enough for you FastMac is one option (their 12" iBook battery is 4400 mah), or you can try the nuPower batteries that OWC (macsales.com) sells--they have a 4100mah one for $100, or a 5000mah one for $130 if you really want to max out the runtime.

 

[gelatin]

i know its not that bad...yet
i did do the calibration thing when i first got it but i do keep my laptop plugged in quite often
do these sites ship to UK?
last time i bought RAM from OWC i was hit with customs and import tax i dont wanna do that again

 

[Eraserhead]

i know its not that bad...yet
i did do the calibration thing when i first got it but i do keep my laptop plugged in quite often
do these sites ship to UK?
last time i bought RAM from OWC i was hit with customs and import tax i dont wanna do that again

Well as you don't list a location (even just UK would help) I assumed you were in the US . Apple sell batteries for £89, but I'm sure there are cheaper options.

 

[gelatin]

just tested how long it would last,about 50 mins til it went to sleep,last i looked was around 40% then off
£89 is a ripoff imo,ive seen that on the apple site

 

[Makosuke]

i did do the calibration thing when i first got it but i do keep my laptop plugged in quite often

Well, Apple does recommend fully discharging and recharging the battery at least once a month to keep it happy.

Running a couple of full calibration runs might recover a bit of time, or at least give you a more realistic estimate of the remaining capacity (procedure is on the support site--down to dead-empty, not just when it goes to sleep, then charging it up and leaving it to top off for a few hours after it claims full).

As for where to buy in the UK, you're going to have to hope someone else can make a suggestion there.

 

[gelatin]

its a bit nutty,the battery has lasted over 2 hours without the charger now
got to about 38% then sleeps,i plug the charger back in and it says 0 now. no warning about reserve battery like it used to do randomly when i had 90+% left

 

[gelatin]

hey guys your advice helped but today i have a problem again
when i unplaug the charger it comes up with this even tho it says 99%

thing is if i ignore the message it continues to work
what should i do?