Macbook battery alarming fluctuations

[Dudeman486]

Hey y'all,

So yesterday (the 5th) I had 5039 mAh on 678 or so loadcycles on a 21month old mac.

today (the 6th) it suddenly plummeted to 3133 mAh on the same loadcycles/months.

now i am somewhat skeptical of my loadcycles because my friends have all had white macbooks roughly as long as i have and their loadcycles are 124 and 170. but the computer says what the computer says.

right now it says i have 100% battery life even though i have been videochatting for an hour without my charger.

does anyone have any idea what is going on? could a simple calibration fix it, or do i need to go to the apple store? I have applecare so that's not a problem...

also, does anyone have any tips on a way i could obtain a seemingly correct reading? system profiler/coconutbattery/the menu bar icon/the little indicator on the battery all seem to be saying 100%, but that can't be...can it?

thanks in advance.

 

[spinnerlys]

Try iStatPro, a widget from islayer.com. It shows you how many cycles you've got, the health of your battery and the current charge.
The health is the amount of "energy" (in lack of a better word), you can still draw from your battery, and the current charge is what you have got left of your battery in terms of usage.

A battery charge should almost always be 100% (minus 2 or 3 sometimes), if fully loaded.
The health will drop over time of course.

A battery with 678 load cycles is more than used up, generally Apple says, that a normal Li-Ion battery will regain 80% health after 300 cycles.


From System Profiler > Hardware > Power:

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 4121
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4492 - What the battery holds at maximum. After 678 cycles it shouldn't be 5039mAh anymore.
Health Information:
Cycle count: 37
Condition: Good