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Leopard seems to kill battery health

Hexernex said:
I find that my MacBook runs exceedingly well as it can last for up to 12 hours at a time with one charge and running Leopard! And during the session of my MacBook I use the AirPort consistently aswell as MSN and LimeWire!

I just never seem to have any problems! I have how ever found that sometimes I can plug my laptop in when it is around 2% - 3% and it will charge in less then 20 min but as soon as u unplug it, it will drop from 100% down to 7% and I will get 5 min worth of Battery life! This used to happen about every second or third charge! But Apple fixed it with me over the phone and it is all good again!:D
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Wow, i am lucky if I can get 12 minutes at a time. MY battery life dropped from around 1.5-2 hours (annoying but acceptable considering its age) to 20 minutes in just a few weeks. As it stands right now, my battery is sitting at 15% health! So I called Apple. My MacBook is out of warranty, but my battery is still covered. Unfortunately, the tech that I spoke to had never heard of this, and didn't believe me. I am going to try calling back today since I really would like to be able to use my laptop off mains.
 
Mad Mac Maniac said:
Wait, ok I'm a noob. I just bought a Macbook and I kinda feel like the battery life has been getting worse. Where exactly would I check the battery health and the number of cycles?
Click to expand...
Sorry for delay in reply. The way I check battery cycles and health is to...

a. Go to applications > utilities > System Profiler > On the left choose "Power" > on the right scroll down till you see.. "Battery Information" below that it will tell you all sorts of info including charge cycles.

b. Download Coconut battery. Will tell you battery exact health.
 
I have it on a G4 powerbook (396 cycles, if it matters. no health % information) and I've noticed the battery has really been poor lately. I figured it was just getting old but now that you mention it, since the leopard install it's been significantly worse. I get just over an hour on this thing unplugged and that's with the screen very dim and basically just a browser and maybe photoshop open.
 
Battery Usage

My understanding is that the battery will naturally wear down with time, and charging it to full capacity will hasten that decline. I currently own a Thinkpad Z60t whose battery is down to about 60% of its original capacity after a little less than two years and about 70 total charge cycles (from what I can tell the charge cycle counter counts the total number of ampere hours charged, not the number of times the laptop was connected to the power grid when the battery was less than 100 percent, so in practical terms if you plugged in the laptop at 90% charge and it charged to 100% that would count as 1/10th of a charge cycle).

I noticed a big decline between the 50 and 60 charge cycle count. One of the things that the battery management software in the Z60t recommended was to only charge the battery to 90 to 95 percent, but I didn't do that and always charged to 100 percent (the power management software has an option to stop charging the battery at a user specified percentage). Guess I'm paying the price now. I'm looking to potentially buy a MacBook Pro after the upgrade announcements next week, and I'm wondering if the Mac OS allows charging the battery to less than 100 percent?

Here's an interesting link on charging Lithium Ion Batteries:

http://batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm

mudtoe
 
I had tiger, then upgraded to Leopard....... No battery health change, I keep it plugged almost the whole time (expect when going to class) 100% still with 60 cycles. Same battery time as in tiger :D
 
then you've got better luck then I had :-(
I've bought my SR MBP when they launched in june, working plugged-in most of the time, sometimes on battery when I take it with me to school.
My battery health was 98-97% for a long time, but since I got Leopard things got worse. I've got 119 cycles and my battery health is down to 62% (3442 out of 5500 mAh according to Coconut Battery, which also tells me I have 5 battery-loadcycles).

I don't know how this happened and I recalibrated my battery, unfortunately it didn't help. When my battery is running down though, battery health sometimes seems to jump to somewere near 80%, any clues anyone?
 
are you able to tell what type of battery you have in your MBP?

#1 sony is absolute garbage (remember exploding batteries from the last 2 years?)

sony batteries wear out faster than anything else simply because sony just sucks.

also draining your battery to nothing then charging it again wears it out on an exponential scale. you want to keep 100% charge at all times when possible.

HEAT is what really kills your battery, if your battery is 10C higher than normal all the time you will only have 50% left at the end of the year even if the battery is fully charged. if you keep your battery at room temp 20C and 100% it will be 94% at the end of the year.

go to batteryuniversity.com for more info

Sanyo cells are the best period, samsung isnt bad, sony is just something you should avoid entirely. but with MBPs i dont think you have a choice since apple tells you what you should have.
 
Can somebody please tell me if this is right? It just doesn't seem correct... How can this battery still be so good? This is on the 3600 mAh battery that came with the PowerBook G4 when I bought it.

Current Battery Charge
Current Battery Charge: 1722 mAh
Maximum Battery Charge 3600 mAh

Current Battery Capacity
Current Battery Capacity: 3600 mAh
Original Battery Capacity: 3600 mAh

Additional Info
Battery-Load cycles: 431
Age of your Mac: 73 Months
Charger connected: Yes
Battery is charging: Yes
 
i'm having a serious problem with my battery health it seems. 8 month old macbook pro, has only 14 battery cycles, and the health has been steadily declining and is now only 52%...going to go to apple and see if i can't get a replacement, cause that's just ridiculous.

this is even after doing the battery calibration :(
 
CrackedButter said:
There is no damage, your battery will wear down naturally anyway, leaving it plugged in is what its designed for. Until you unplug it of course.
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From what Apple told me and what I have observed, leaving a laptop battery plugged into the mains does shorten life.
 
thevibesman said:
From what Apple told me and what I have observed, leaving a laptop battery plugged into the mains does shorten life.
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Once the battery has been charged, its no longer receiving an extra charge from the mains, its turned off automatically, has done so for me since my iBook G3 800mhz. This is the reason why an Apple laptop won't needlessly charge the battery unless its below 95%.

What you say is true however because before my iBook I had a NEC laptop and its battery was constantly plugged in always charging, the thing didn't last long.
 
Hmm disturbing indeed...I just checked after reading...got 7 cycles (that cant be right) and only 98% battery life left...I just bought my macbook last friday..what the *beep* ?
 
According to "About This Mac", I have 100% health on my battery. 117 Cycles currently. I use the battery quite frequently btw.
 
what is the difference between the battery-load cycles that coconut battery refers to, and the cycles on my iStat pro? I have 133 cycles on iStat, which seems right to me as I unplug my MB quite often to move around my house, but coconut battery only reads 7 battery-load cycles. I've only just recently dropped to 95-98% on my 3 month old MB.
 
6mt15 said:
what is the difference between the battery-load cycles that coconut battery refers to, and the cycles on my iStat pro? I have 133 cycles on iStat, which seems right to me as I unplug my MB quite often to move around my house, but coconut battery only reads 7 battery-load cycles. I've only just recently dropped to 95-98% on my 3 month old MB.
Click to expand...

CC Battery knows nothing. Every time I see it mentioned on this site, it's wrong. Stick with iStat Pro.
 
heatmiser said:
CC Battery knows nothing. Every time I see it mentioned on this site, it's wrong. Stick with iStat Pro.
Click to expand...

I would tend to agree with you. I checked my system profiler, and it gave me the same results as iStat Pro. I assume that is where iStat takes its info. Given that system profiler is apple's own program for getting system info, I would say its gotta be the best bet.
 
::Lisa:: said:
Sorry for delay in reply. The way I check battery cycles and health is to...

a. Go to applications > utilities > System Profiler > On the left choose "Power" > on the right scroll down till you see.. "Battery Information" below that it will tell you all sorts of info including charge cycles.

b. Download Coconut battery. Will tell you battery exact health.
Click to expand...

I have a 1 GIG TiBook, quite old now, but the battery lasted about an hour when it was new. Replacement batteries from Apple at that time were the same.
I have had a battery life of about 10 minutes for the last 4 .5 years and gave up on it long, long ago assuming that all laptops had lousy battery life.

This is whatSystem profiler says (plugged in),

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3405
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 3399
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 16643
Cycle Count: 184

And this is what it says only 5 minutes after disconnecting the power and switching to battery:
Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3405
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 0
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 16169
Cycle Count: 184


Can anyone tell me what it means?
Thanks chaps.
 
I was just about to make a thread about this because I got this MBP in October and my battery is currently at 87% health at 18 cycles! Both CoconutBattery and iStatPro are giving me the same figures within 1 percentage point. System Profiler tells me my battery's health is "good".

I've been running Leopard since the day they shipped it here in Japan...

At what point should I call Apple about my battery, assuming its health continues to decline at the current rate?
 
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