[P1] Battery life issues

[Brian Pearce]

> About the only thing I didn't try yet was to bury a dead cat under a 
> stump in the cemetery under a full moon while chanting the pledge of 
> allegiance to the flag backwards.

Hey! That was going to be my next suggestion...

>  I haven't tried a complete new install of 10.3 yet, either. I am 
> about to the point of concluding that I need a new battery. However, I 
> am afraid that if I get a new battery and it turns out to be an issue 
> with settings in 10.3, that I'm going to end up with a battery life of 
> 7 minutes on the new one as well. Before that, however, does anyone 
> know which terminals to short out? What do I have to lose?

The tip I read was to short out the two outermost terminals, jump them 
with a piece of wire. I tried this, but I could never get it to 
work...either that, or it had no effect. Keep in mind that it can be a 
dangerous thing to do, so proceed with caution.

I get great battery life out of my new BTI battery...just over 4 
hours...but your situation doesn't sound to me like your battery is at 
the end of it's natural lifespan just yet. When it happened to me, it 
was after three years of *constant* (lmost daily) charge and discharge 
cycles, and I was left with about 30 minutes battery life per charge. 
And it was a slow progression, not a sudden change after software 
installation.

Have you tried calling Apple and asking them, since this happened when 
you installed 10.3? (I was going to say it can't be any more difficult 
than doing a clean install of the OS, but that depends on how long you 
get stuck on hold...)

If worse comes to worse, if you don't mind being tethered to an adapter 
for a week, send it to me and I'll try it in my VST charger. (It's a 
clamshell iBook, correct?) We can sort that all out off-list if it 
comes to that.

BRIAN/bpearce at cloud9.net (Nope, no relation...)