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I checked mine: they are bad
Authored by: SOX on Mar 13, '03 01:09:02PM

Before I read about this problem I had been thinking something was wrong with my battery. I could never "catch it in the act" but it seemed like one moment I would have lots of charge and then poof it would drop from an hour of reserve time to sleep mode.

So I left X charge running and here is what I saw.

I have two batteries an old one and a one less than 6 months old. the old one would discharge too between 45 and 55% then drop instantly to 1% charge (I mean instantly). When I recharged it, it would charge assymtotically to around 45% then instantly pop up to 100% charge.

on my new battery this discharge sudden drop occured at around 25% remaining charge. however I did not observe the sudden increace during the charging process. this one charges assymtotically to 99%.

I tried resetting the PMU but this changed nothing. I also zapped the parameter ram.

I'm not sure if this is something I should complaain or not. after all I have read that all Li have a lifetime of around 500 charge cycles before they decay. even though I keep mine plugged in most of the time I think that in 6 months use anyone would encounter around 500 recharging events. So I'm not sure if I should be unhappy with this performance.

I think that if there is a problem its with the software not reporting the dimished capacity properly. If it had I would just have noted a lower capacity rather than a sudden drop and been much less alarmed.



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I checked mine: they are bad
Authored by: mattmoss on Mar 13, '03 04:32:45PM

I get the battery instant discharge as well. At 100%, the menubar indicator gives me about 1:30. But it usually only makes it about 30 minutes (to around 60%) where it instantly discharges to 1% and goes to sleep. Verified looking at the pretty little lights on the battery.

I've had my dual-usb iBook 500 for 1.5 yrs now, so who knows how bad the battery really should be? This is what I get from the script at full charge, plugged in:

voltage=12389 flags=5/0x005 amperage=1200 capacity=1752 current=1746 [99.7%]

Strangely, one of the other symptoms I see is that every once in a while, even while the battery is at full charge and plugged in for hours, the light on the charger plug goes from green (ok) to orange (charging).



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I checked mine: they are bad
Authored by: everydayjoe on Mar 13, '03 05:55:21PM

"
Strangely, one of the other symptoms I see is that every once in a while, even while the battery is at full charge and plugged in for hours, the light on the charger plug goes from green (ok) to orange (charging).
"

I've noticed the same thing (green to orange to green) with mine - iBook 600Mhz, dual USB, about 1.5 years old. Battery performed better after running the 10.2.4 Combo Updater and then repairing permissions, but definitely not as well as before 10.2.4.

-jonathan



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Same problem here -- Call AppleCare!
Authored by: dcheng on Mar 13, '03 05:34:21PM

A few months back, I had the exact same problem with my iBook G3/600 (16 VRAM) battery. It would drain normally from 100% down to about 50%, at which point the charge would abruptly drop to zero and the machine would go to sleep.

A quick call to Apple tech support had me resetting the PRAM, NVRAM, power manager, and other "standard" things, but to no avail.

It was quickly determined that my four-month old battery was defective, and I was couriered a replacement the following day under the AppleCare warranty.

I believe "decent" battery performance is covered under the AppleCare extended warranty plan. I recharge my battery at least once a day, so I can easily reach the "average" life-expectancy of 500-600 cycles for Li-Ion cells before a year is up. Considering the cost of a new iBook battery, the AppleCare warranty will pay for itself in new batteries alone!

FWIW, my replacement iBook battery that's about four months and maybe 200 charge-cycles old shows:

voltage=12540 flags=5/0x005 amperage=1200 capacity=3645 current=3645 [100.0%]

with noticably worse -- but still acceptable -- performance from when it was new. It equates to around four hours of continous, low-processor use with the screen brightness at 10%.

-Dave

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