On 11/24/10 12:06 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
On Nov 20, 2010, at 7:38 AM, Yersinia wrote:
Yup that's what Bruce said, that that battery was dying. Alas, though, I can't buy a new battery
right now so I actually went back to the original battery (the one the "dying" battery
had been purchased this summer to replace!), which, though it has less "health" than the
dying one which was giving me the surprise shutdowns at between 50-60% but when I rebooted after
plugging in wall juice, was reading in the 40-50% range, which made me really not understand, since
in the past I'd gotten a good deal lower than that and got a warning about needing to plug in wall
juice! -- is not suddenly shutting down (for NOW anyway. It would be illogical to assume that all
conditions remain stable... ;-) )
Laptop batteries fail in two general modes, and lucky you, you're experiencing
both of 'em.
1) The battery is old, and all the cells have degraded so that only 40% of the
original charging ability is present. This is your 'old' battery. You charge it
up, it only lasts a certain amount of time, and fails gracefully.
2) The battery has some cells that failed completely, and others that hold good
charges. The charging system THINKS it's taking a 100% charge, but is in
reality only taking 40%, so the meter shows 40% and the system shuts down
because there's no juice left in the batteries. This is most likely what's
happened to your 'new' battery.
If the new battery was purchased this summer, it may still be under warrantee.
Yeah, sounds like my original battery, however old it was when I bought
this iBook July 2007 from FleaBay, is STILL failing "gracefully" while
the "new" one I bought THIS summer is in the second category. I put the
original one back in, and while my iBook usage is back down to normal, I
also make it a point now to make sure I'll have a place to plug it in
for wall juice often enough. But so far, no surprise shutdowns and I did
let it get down to around 50% or so before plugging it in.
The battery I bought this summer wouldn't be under any warranty I'm
aware of because I bought it used and cheap off the Swap List, it was
reconditioned -- not actually really new. Not to mention, the seller
didn't say anything about a warranty when he advertised it and I bought
it anyway..and at first it was working really well. I think the
complications with my move and not getting my desktop network back up
considerably past when I anticipated, I ended up using the iBook as a
main computer for a little over a month made me burn that poor battery
up way faster than I would have done with my typical iBook usage...which
is normally light to moderate, as compared to hours every day on my
desktop Macs.
It's going to be a few months before I can buy a new battery but when I
do I'll think of buying a "real" new one this time...and thankfully I
don't plan on moving ever again!
~Yersinia.
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