[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). I replied by observing that 50 or 100 of those  
> must've been in the last 6 months since I first reported the  
> problem and they said that I'd reported 302 charge cycles in July.  
> Either their logs are wrong or the flash memory (??) inside this  
> battery is knackered. I suppose that could cause the problem I'm  
> seeing.

The replacement battery arrived today, and prior to replacing it I  
thought I'd check the figures again in System Profiler.

Co-incidentally with the cycle count being incremented - for the  
first time in 5 days, or the first time in 5 months? - the charge  
capacity has dropped MASSIVELY:

Battery Information:

   Battery Installed:	Yes
   First low level warning:	No
   Full Charge Capacity (mAh):	2442
   Remaining Capacity (mAh):	2403
   Amperage (mA):	0
   Voltage (mV):	12501
   Cycle Count:	303

Compared with the charge capacity of c 5500mAh on my mother's  
identical laptop, this would seem to clearly confirm my observations  
of shortened (by an estimated 50% from new) battery life.

The icon of a grey-outlined battery next to the clock today shows  
inside it a black power-plug symbol and next to it the word  
"charged". It seems to me that this is the first time in a while that  
I've noticed this black power-plug symbol, but of course "to notice"  
is an inconclusive condition.

The new battery, taken out of the box & fitted, with the laptop on  
charge:

Battery Information:

   Battery Installed:	Yes
   First low level warning:	No
   Full Charge Capacity (mAh):	5196
   Remaining Capacity (mAh):	1652
   Amperage (mA):	2165
   Voltage (mV):	11911
   Cycle Count:	1

Stroller.