Macbook Pro Battery Issue: Showing 100% charged, jumps to reserve after 5 minutes.

[permutated]

Hi yall,

Had this Unibody Macbook Pro for about 2 and a 1/2 years I'd say.

Today I turned it on without the charger connected, when it finally booted up the battery displayed ZERO percent and powered off. I plugged in the charger, waited about an hour, tried to power back on, the computer wouldn't power up. So I swapped my charger for my wife's Macbook (White) power supply and it began to show charging, properly booted upon request, and displayed 100% charged after 5 minutes. Now when I remove the charger it jumps back to reserves after a few minutes and displays the warning pop-up.

Few questions; is the battery dead? If so why is it only allowing me to boot up with one particular charger and not the other? Is there anything I can do to avoid spending $129 at the Apple store tomorrow on a new battery, any tests I can run at home? Would I be able to have them test the battery if I brought in the battery and not my computer?

Thanks for any advice. Kind of worried right now.

 

[plasticphyte]

All batteries have a certain amount of 'life' in them. No one has invented the 'never-say-die' battery yet, so you're going to need to pay Apple for a new one.

 

[lcseds]

Go to "About this Mac" from the Apple pulldown menu. Select "More Info", select power and have a look at battery cycles/health/capacity. Chances are very good you need a new battery.