[Ti] "Leaking" battery charge? - *NOT*

[alan kastner]

John O'Brien asks:
> over the past week or so the meter has been gradually going 
> down, by about a percentage point every few days. It's now down to 96%, 
> though the green light on the plug still suggests a full charge.
>
> Is it normal for the charge to "stabilise" within a few percent under 
> 100%? Can I expect it to go down any further? Should I panic?

This is normal behaviour. To quote Apple's Knowledge Base Document #8344:
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88344>
>This is normal. The batteries used in the PowerBook G4 [snip] are
>designed to avoid short discharge/charge cycles in order to
>prolong the overall life of the battery. Because of this, when
>setting the Mac OS X battery status menu bar icon to display charge
>state by percentage, you may notice that the reported charge stays
>between 95 percent and 99 percent. When the battery level eventually
>drops below 95 percent, it will charge all the way to 100 percent.

Note that this behaviour is not limited to OS X. You should see the same thing happen on your GigaBook in OS 9.2.2 as well.

 alan