Questions about charging and turning on the PB

[annk]

My new 17-inch PB is great, but there are two things I wonder about:

1) In Los Angeles, the light was amber when the PB was charging and green when fully charged, just like it says in the manual. But here in Norway, the light is green no matter what, even when the battery is practically run down. It doesn´t really matter, since the battery life is as expected, but it´s weird. Any ideas as to why? The wall wart is designed to handle the electrical current in both places, I´m just using a prong adaptor here.

2) Once in a while, when I turn it on from a complete shut-down (not sleep, in other words), nothing happens visually. Sometimes the opening chord will sound, sometimes not, the screen will remain blank. I can always hear the hard disc if I put my ear to the speaker, so I finally just hold the power button in until it shuts down, wait a few minutes then try again. It has always started up correctly on the second try. It doesn´t happen all the time, and I haven´t been able to discern any pattern. It doesn´t seem to matter if I hold the button in one, two, five seconds etc.

Any ideas??

 

[pyrotoaster]

I'm not sure about the second problem. You could try running some regular matinence (like repairing disk permissions in Disk Utility) and see if that helps the problem. Or you could always backup and do a clean install of OS X (although I'd save that as a last resort).

As for the light on the power charger, it could be that the cord is designed for North American outlets (I'm assuming you're using Apple really quite nifty World Adapter kit to charge in Norway). It might charge fine in foreign plugs, but not be able to properly signal the charge status. What about the green LEDs on the battery itself? Do those still work as they should?

 

[kbonnel]

I have not noticed any issues here in Stockholm. I am using the World Adapter kit, and it is fine. When I go back to the states to visit, I will pick up a few 110 to 220 converters and see what happens.

Kimo

 

[annk]

I´m just using a prong adaptor, not the world adaptor kit. The reason for this is that the prong adaptor cost next to nothing, and the Apple store in Oslo sells the world adaptor kit for over 400 Norwegian kroner, a huge difference. I researched the wall wart ahead of time (I´m using the American wall wart) because I wanted to know if I should have something more advanced than the prong adaptor. The Apple store here assured me that a prong adaptor was all that was needed, since the wart is set up to recognize and use the different currents.

I didn´t think of checking out the light on the battery, I´m not even sure I know where it is, do I have to open the door on the PB´s bottom?? The light issue isn´t a problem, it´s just very weird. My brother assures me the light was switching from amber to green while he was using the PB in LA.