[marklee]

Hi everybody, I am a longtime Wintel user who made the plunge 15 months ago and bought my first Mac, a 12" iBook. I have been greatly pleased with the machine and OS X. This weekend my battery, the original that came with the machine has apparently died, but the manner in which it seems to have met its demise seem a little strange to me and has left me wondering if I might have some other issue. My battery life had slowly been decreasing since I bought the machine. I originally would get about 4 hours or so with my usage habits. That had drifted down to about 3 hours over the 15 months I have used the machine. In the last month I have been very busy and doing work stuff and hadn't needed to use the iBook much. When I have used it has been with the AC power on. Last night, I was using the iBook on battery power for about an hour. When I got through, the percentage meter on the menu bar was showing 52%. I plugged it in to recharge and noted about an hour later that it STILL showed 52% but the light around the AC plug was green rather than amber indicating that charging was complete. I unplugged and plugged back in, no change. I then unplugged and used the iBook for a bit longer until I got down to around 5%. I plugged back in and this time the meter rose to 13% before stopping there and the light turned green again. I then let the battery drain all the way down until the machine went into suspend mode. When I plug in now, the light stays green and the battery will not take any charge at all. When I unplug, the iBook immediately goes to sleep. When I click on the battery meter with the AC cord plugged in, it pulls down the menu with the top most item, "Calculating ... until full" greyed out.

I have had experience with other Lithium batteries slowly losing their ability to hold a charge, but never have seen one just fall off of a cliff as this one did. It has made me wonder if possibly the charger mechanism is not working rather than the battery being completely dead and unable to hold a charge. When I press the test button on the battery itself, the first light blinks green very rapidly for a few seconds. I don't have ready access to either another battery or another iBook to test anything. Does this sound like I just need a new battery or is there likely another problem?

Thanks for any help. I have learned a lot from reading these forums.

Mark

[torifile]

I think you might need to reset the PMU (power management unit) in your iBook. From Apple's support pages:

For iBook (16 VRAM) and later models of iBook, there is no physical reset button. If the computer is on, turn it off. Reset the power manager by simultaneously pressing and then releasing Shift-Control-Option-Power on the keyboard. Do not press the fn (Function) key while using this combination of keystrokes. Wait 5 seconds. Press the Power button to restart the iBook computer.

[marklee]

Hi torifile,

I forgot to mention that I had though of this and have tried it twice to no avail. Absolutely no change after a PMU reset. Thanks for the idea.

Mark

[Franz Josef]

Hi Mark, welcome . Sounds like a battery issue; likely that it's just a dud. Lithium batterires are in any case pretty old technology these days. You should probably expexct 2 years of decent battery life in normal use. I'd suggest you simply buy a new one.

You may want to look at this site, posted on another thread > http://www.newertech.com/

[Unch]

I've got a couple of related questions:-

Generally how long does Apple keep making replacement batteries for?

Is battery failure (I'm talking about the kind Mark has expereinced, not normal capacity delpetion) covered by AppleCare?

[torifile]

Originally Posted by Unch I've got a couple of related questions:- Generally how long does Apple keep making replacement batteries for? Is battery failure (I'm talking about the kind Mark has expereinced, not normal capacity delpetion) covered by AppleCare?

Normally, your battery is "covered" by applecare for 6 months or so. This is more of an unwritten rule, though. I've been able to convince them to give me a new battery 9 months into the warranty. But this was a while ago. With batteries, I think a lot of it depends on how good of a convincer you are.

[Ichiban_jay]

after my battery fiasco and e-mailing steve jobs and getting calls from a representative, she said batteries are covered for 12 months.

I got a new battery from applecare nonetheless because I was complaining about it at 9 months, but by the time I resorted to e-mailing steve jobs it had already been 13 months.

[marklee]

Weird battery behavior update ...

Just as I suspected, there is more at play than a dead battery. My battery actually seems to be OK. For some reason the laptop is not charging it most of the time. I left the unit plugged in all night Saturday with the battery at 0%, the green rather than amber light on the AC cord and when I woke up Sunday, low and behold the battery was at 100%. At some point during the night the laptop charged. However, after using the iBook and draining the battery back down to 50%, I plugged it back in and after a couple of hours, nothing. The charge hadn't come up any and the light was green. This morning when I got up though, the light was blinking slowly between amber and green. The charge was at 96%. I have tried changing wall outlets, reseating the battery, and have reset my PMU. Nothing seems to help and I can't figure out why my battery seems to only want to charge intermittently. Any more ideas? My G4 1.2gh iBook is out of warranty.