[X4U] Laptop battery life?

[Stroller]

On 17 Nov 2007, at 19:46, Stroller wrote:
> ...
> The short story is that after I expressed my dissatisfaction the  
> support agent at Apple agreed to give me a new battery "as a  
> courtesy". Based on a "full charge capacity (mAh)" of 4105 in  
> System Profiler they reckoned the battery to be 80% as good as new,  
> but that just doesn't jibe with the number of hours I seem to be  
> getting out of it - unless I'm misunderestimating quite badly, I'm  
> getting about half the battery life I originally did.
>
> 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). ...

FWIW this is what my mother's identical MacBook shows:

Battery Information:

   Battery Installed:	Yes
   First low level warning:	No
   Full Charge Capacity (mAh):	5439
   Remaining Capacity (mAh):	5358
   Amperage (mA):	-45
   Voltage (mV):	12438
   Cycle Count:	38

It would appear to be in MUCH better condition than mine - perhaps  
surprisingly so, as I didn't think I mistreated mine so badly. Hers  
is also a CoreDuo (not Core2) and is probably 6 months newer than  
mine - perhaps a year old. I'm surprised to find that it shows so few  
cycles - this must indicate a COMPLETE discharge & recharge; I think  
my mother's normal usage is to leave the laptop unplugged when in  
normal use and plug it in when she's finished; she probably uses it  
typically for 30 - 60 minutes at a time.

Stroller.