Battery Problems.

[dragon2611]

My Macbook will just Die when its on battery, yet the battery guage can be reading anywhere between 20 - 70%.

Cocanut battery says my battery health is 82%, my mac is 24months old and the battery has gone though 185 loadcycles.

Im guessing the battery is worn out but on most pc laptops when that happens the charge will just Drop suddently to zero.

In my case the mac will power off (and die almost instantly if you try and power it on) but the battery guage will still try and tell me it's got plenty of charge left (if it gets that far into loading) as will the Leds on the battery itself indicating it does indeed have a charge.

Did try an SMC reset by following the proccedure listed on the apple site but it didn't seem to make a difference.

If the battery is worn out then fair enough but I was wandering if it was likely to be something else given that cocanut thinks the battery has around 82% of its design capacity.

Macbook will run fine on the AC adaptor.

It's the 1.83ghz core duo with 2gb ram and a 120gb HDD installed, combi-drive.

 

[scienide09]

Have you calibrated your battery/monitor recently? It could be that you're getting false reports of the battery life from the battery monitor and from Coconut battery.
Try that next.

 

[aquajet]

You can't properly calibrate your battery meter if the machine is shutting down unexpectedly. Sounds like your battery is defective.

 

[MacBooksRock]

It could be the connecter that the battery plugs into. But most likely a defective battery.

 

[dragon2611]

I think the battery has had it, Use it on the power adaptor most of the time anwyay quite like the look of these low end mini laptops that are coming out.

probably wont get another macbook anytime soon. They are nice machines but personally I feel the price premium on them is still to high.

I bought my macbook becuase at the time apple had the faster intel cpus and for the same money a 13" pc laptop would have been slower.

 

[Palladium]

Hi,

I have a 25 month old MacBook that was showing the same symptoms. According to Apple Support sites a battery should be good for 300 cycles in three years and I was only up to 110! A couple of months ago, I rang Apple and they listened to my story but didn't rush to offer a replacement battery. They asked what "About this Mac" said about battery condition (it said good at that point) and made me do various things (e.g., reset PRAM) and then told me to go off and try calibrating the battery again. I did so and when time remaining had fallen to 50 mins, the MacBook just shut down so I rang Apple again. The guy I was talking to again did not rush to say anything was wrong/unusual with my battery's performance but when I repeated the early shut down behaviour he admitted that wasn't normal and said I could have a new battery. The old battery was about 18 months old before I discovered iStat and Coconutbattery. When I began using these, they both reported a health of approx 85% though this varied down to 75 and back up again. The new battery (6 weeks?) is rock steady at 100% health!

 

[reubs]

Interesting thread. I've been worrying about my battery lately, and I know I haven't calibrated like I'm supposed to.

I also have a 24 mo old MacBook, and my battery is at 43% of its original capacity, and it has 320 charge cycles. I don't think it's a defective battery, and it's probably user-error. Even still, I've learned the importance of calibration!

 

[aquajet]

There's nothing particularly important about calibrating the battery, as we have discussed a million times already. Battery calibration really means battery meter calibration and has nothing to do with battery longevity.

 

[reubs]

So if that's the case, does that mean I have a potentially faulty battery? I don't follow the battery discussions very closely, but if it's possible that my battery is faulty I would love to get my hands on a fresh, functioning one as soon as possible.

 

[aquajet]

No unfortunately. Apple will only consider replacing the battery if it has less than 300 cycles. You could always call Applecare and ask though. They've been known to be flexible with the rules from time to time.