Battery life for 1yr old iBook

[Brett Forrester]

Dear iBook Listers,

Thank you for the incoming responses regarding expected battery life 
for a one-year-old iBook (iceBook, dual USB, Marble, P29, 
what-nickname have you). I hope to read a few more, but I do find it 
curious so few of you have responded, given that this is the iBook 
List and that presumably more than ten of us have such type of iBooks 
to our name. (I also find it curious that we on the have such 
difficulty staying on topic--battery life of iBooks--but that 
observation stems from my composition-instructor incarnation, and 
without tangents, really, what fun would all this be?)

The consensus seems to be that between three and five hours of 
battery use should still be available to a one-year-old (probably 
closer to 1-1/2 in my own case) iBook battery, depending on AirPort 
use, and conditions of backlighting, sound volume, and CD access, as 
the following example (not all) excerpts suggest (names withheld to 
protect the innocent):

>Given Airport and OS X, these iBooks will get about 3 hours on a fully
>charged new battery - assuming no CD is in the computer. Just having a CD in

and

>I've had mine [iBook] for over a year now from new, and I can manage 
>to squeeze
>almost four and a half-five hours of use from the battery if I turn the
>screen brightness down to half or slightly below, turn off sound, remove any
>CD's from the drive and run the screen at either thousands of colours, or
>256 grays, which doesn't bother me very much.
>
>If I were to run it at full brightness, I might get three hours maximum, but

and

>For what it's worth to the original poster of this thread, my dual USB
>iBook does very well on its battery, but I do not use Airport.  The
>batteries, now 11 months old each (I have 2), average at least 4.50 hours
>each on a full charge.

All these responses anecdotally suggest that my iceBook's battery at 
1-1/2 years (original from July 2001) should be yielding 
substantially more than the one-hour (1 hr) average use I get before 
the screen dims and I am treated to the sleep-or-recharge warning. 
Just now while checking my e-mail and compiling this response, I was 
running off battery after a full night's recharge, and the screen 
dimmed with the accompanying warning at just about the hour mark of 
use. I had Airport on and connected for about thirty minutes of that 
time, and the only other applications running were the Launcher and 
Spell Catcher under OS 9.2.2 with 128 MB RAM.

Interestingly, none of my responders thus far have indicated any sort 
of expected battery life over the long haul--from original receipt of 
machine to "time to change the battery for the smoke detector" sort 
of deadline, which was what prompted my original question. Every 
battery has an expected lifetime of viability, given varying use, no? 
The lack of response suggests to me that, conspiracy aside, the 
average iceBook battery hasn't reached the end of its period of 
usefulness, so my machine's battery must be one of those exceptions 
to the rule. (Also I did manage to query an Apple Store manager at a 
Genius Bar this weekend, and while he didn't tell me straight out 
also that "X number of years can be expected," he did imply that 
about three years was Apple's guideline for his understanding.) Of 
course I don't have AppleCare for my machine (too expensive for me at 
time of purchase and forgotten before my 'Book's one-year birthday), 
so I'll have to fork over $129 earlier than I might have hoped for a 
new battery. That aside, my iceBook is truly a great machine, and if 
the new battery does last about its expected three-year life span, I 
shall be pleased.

If only a future iteration of OS X restored the bells and whistles 
(literally) dropped from OS 9, I'd be exceptionally pleased.

Cheers,
Brett
======
After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an accident, it makes 
you wonder about history.
- Dave Barry
======
-- 
bforrester at macconnect.com