[X4U] Laptop battery life?

[Stroller]

On 18 Nov 2007, at 04:07, Jim Robertson wrote:

> On 11/17/07 11:46 AM, "Stroller" <macmonster at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>> Part of the reason that Apple agreed to this replacement was that
>> they started out by saying that one should only expect 300 charge
>> cycles out of a battery and that mine has 302 (again, shown in System
>> Profiler).
>
>
> I didn't realize that System Profiler could report this much detail.

Nor did I! I'm quite impressed.

> My
> battery in my MacBook Pro has been yielding shorter and shorter  
> usage times
> recently, so I bought a "new" battery from amazon.com (actually one  
> of their
> associated retailers),

Yes, I subsequently looked up eBay and you're looking at £35 - £60,  
depending on supplier & shipping & stuff. I'd consider that quite  
reasonable if my lappy was older.

> It reports it's had 53 cycles already! Should a
> new battery report 0 or 1 charge cycles?

No idea. The count on mine did not increase simply by unplugging &  
replugging the battery, nor has it done so last night by discharging  
it completely (running XP, mind) and recharging fully. So either this  
feature of my battery is indeed knackered, or I have no idea what the  
criteria for a "charge cycle" is.

> My old battery reports 152 cycles, full charge capacity of 1743 mAh,
> remaining capacity of 1684 mAh, but amperage of "0" when running on  
> a/c
> power. Does THAT mean the old battery is defective?

Mine also seems to show amperage of 0 when plugged in, but I'm  
surprised that a battery for a 15" or 17" machine would seem to have  
so much a lower capacity than mine (which appears to have been  
5000mAh when new). Assuming that the full charge capacity of a new  
battery for your lappy is 6000mAh or 9000mAh then the figures  
reported by yours should surely fall outside AppleCare's normal-usage  
specification, and you should get a new one under warranty.

Stroller.