i've had my powerbook for just over a year and lately i've watched my battery life rapidly dwindle in the last month or so. First down to an hour and now i;m lucky to get 45 minutes on a charge. is there anything i can do to remedy this short of buying a new battery which i am seriously considering. And yes i do turn down the display brightness and my energy saver is on longest battery life.
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Powerbook Battery Life
- Thread starter Macpoops
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I don't know what I'm doing right, but...
I've had my 550MHz PowerBook for a year as well and I can get up to 4 hours and 30 minutes in Jaguar if I do nothing but light AppleWorks stuff. I've used this thing off AC only maybe 30 times, and I've completely drained the battery less than 10. I calibrated my battery when I got it. Do you use your battery a lot? I don't think there's any way to breathe new life into old batteries...
I've had my 550MHz PowerBook for a year as well and I can get up to 4 hours and 30 minutes in Jaguar if I do nothing but light AppleWorks stuff. I've used this thing off AC only maybe 30 times, and I've completely drained the battery less than 10. I calibrated my battery when I got it. Do you use your battery a lot? I don't think there's any way to breathe new life into old batteries...
This suggestion is coming from my experience with a PC laptop three years ago, so I'm not sure if it will apply to you.
The instructions on my old laptop suggested letting the battery run down to empty on its own every few months to prevent loss of charge time (sounds oxymoronic, I know). Once it was completely empty, you would charge till it was full again. Seemed to work fairly well - the battery kept its full juice potential for quite a while
Of course, I have no experience with Mac laptops, so I don't know what the implications are around system integrity / hard drive safety, etc...
The instructions on my old laptop suggested letting the battery run down to empty on its own every few months to prevent loss of charge time (sounds oxymoronic, I know). Once it was completely empty, you would charge till it was full again. Seemed to work fairly well - the battery kept its full juice potential for quite a while
Of course, I have no experience with Mac laptops, so I don't know what the implications are around system integrity / hard drive safety, etc...
see i've done all of that. I use my battery but i hardly ever let it run down past 10 percent until recently. Trying to drain the battery in hopes it will keep a charge longer. at the moment i just unplugged it and i only have 47 minutes worth of battery according to the meter. A royal PITA guess i am just going to be spending another 120 bones on a new battery
Current Mac batteries are not supposed to suffer from "battery memory" whereby you need to drain it to get it to hold a full charge. Indeed, draining it all the way can be detrimental to it's life. I really can't say what to do besides getting a new one...
i had a PB 145 or something years back, and it's battery did this (held about 15 seconds charge), so i drained it to the point where the computer died, then i used a high-voltage christmas light (mini style) taped to the prongs to drain the smallest bit of residual charge out. Got it to hold a half hour's worth of charge this way, anyway. that's the only experience i have on the subject
pnw
i had a PB 145 or something years back, and it's battery did this (held about 15 seconds charge), so i drained it to the point where the computer died, then i used a high-voltage christmas light (mini style) taped to the prongs to drain the smallest bit of residual charge out. Got it to hold a half hour's worth of charge this way, anyway. that's the only experience i have on the subject
pnw