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Short Battery Lifetime - Need Replacement?

M

Mac Lad

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 25, 2004
36
0
Big Easy, Louisiana
Hello all,

So here is the story... I usually get about 1-2 hrs (or 2hr and 40 min if I'm lucky) of battery power on my 1 GHz 12" Powerbook. However, since it's almost at the end of semester, I've been running lots of processor-intensive applications for the 2 past weeks (like Matlab). And now, the battery lifetime is only for about 20-30 minutes ... Does this mean that I have to replace the battery?? If yes, do I have to get one from Apple's website or any other brand from ebay will suffice??

Thanx a lot for the help!!!....
 
Open Terminal, make the window wide, and type the following:

ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo

There you'll see your battery's current capacity (first item) and the absolute max capacity (last item). For instance, my three-month-old PB has a capacity of 4311 and a max capacity of 4400...I'm good. I have a four-year-old iBook whose capacity is 161 with a max capacity of 4000...I get 5 minutes of battery life on that one. :D
 
Hmm... thanx for the tips WildCowboy, my battery's capacity is 397 while the absolute maximum capacity is 4200. I guess it's time to change the battery :cool:
 
Mac Lad said:
Hmm... thanx for the tips WildCowboy, my battery's capacity is 397 while the absolute maximum capacity is 4200. I guess it's time to change the battery :cool:
Click to expand...

What is the number listed under "cycles"? Unless this number (a rough count of how many charge cycles you've used) is in the 300s or higher, I would seriously recommend you go through the conditioning/calibrating procedure first (charge to full, drain all the way until it *sleeps*, then plug in immediately, unsleep it and let it charge). I would advise doing that at least once and then doing the ioreg thing again.

After about 100 cycles, and 17 months, I am at 3500 out of 4400 on my iBook 12".
 
wild cowboy, that is an AWESOME command!@$

Do you have any other sweet commands like that???
 
My dead iBook battery (referenced above) only has 128 cycles on it, but then again, it's also four years old. So don't go just by the number of cycles; it's a combination of time and cycles.

And no, I don't really have any more of those great commands, though you certainly can do a lot with Terminal. I get just about all of my info from these forums...I just happen to be able to remember it and spit it back out when someone asks about it. :D
 
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