Battery problems

[Paul Bernhardt]

OK... now I've been hit by the battery problem.

Dual USB iBook, new in late August 02, 700MHz.
OS 10.2.5 updated a week or so ago.

Noticed it running iTunes 4 day before yesterday with 'visualizer' 
running. Yesterday I duplicated it as follows: I started with 2 hours 49 
minutes battery power after unplugging from wall. Playing a song with 
visualizer quickly drains the battery. 7 minutes of Pink Floyd with 
visualizer and its down to about 1 hour 15 minutes of battery left. I 
stopped the visualizer, which seemed to help a lot, the battery going up 
to about 1 hour 40 minutes left. I started surfing the web with iTunes 
playing in the background. I wasn't monitoring the battery any more. 
About 10 minutes later it suddenly went to sleep due to low battery, no 
warning... when operating normally a warning appears that you should shut 
down and that unwarned shutdown will occur shortly. I didn't get that 
warning.

I recall much discussion occuring a month or so ago.

What was the bottom lines found in that discussion?

Paul