Battery Maintenence (spelling?)

bis22bis22
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
On my iBook (original dual USB model), after about 10 months or so of having it, the battery started lasting for less than an hour when it always used to last at least two. I got Apple's warranty service to take care of it (they sent me a new battery and it worked), but my question is, is there any way I can prevent this from happening again? If it does I won't have a warranty to fix it for me this time.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    xionjaxionja Posts: 504member
    The original battery could have been faulty which is why it failed. The battery you now have might work fine for a long time.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    bis22bis22 Posts: 34member
    [quote]Originally posted by xionja:

    <strong>The original battery could have been faulty which is why it failed. The battery you now have might work fine for a long time.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I don't know if that's it, cause I used to have a Powerbook G3/266 which had a similar problem that got to the point where it wouldn't even run off the battery anymore. On that unit I had it plugged in almost all the time. Could that be a cause?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    xionjaxionja Posts: 504member
    I dunno, i'm not a technical sorta person, maybe the battery gets like over charged then can never fully charge. I'll tell my sisternot to do that with her ibook
  • Reply 4 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Cripes I hope that isn't right! I leave my iBook plugged in mostly too! :eek:



    Someone once told me batteries need "cycling"... this was years ago... but essentially it means charging the battery 100%, then using it until it's dead. Is this true? Programmer? Alcimedes? Anyone who knows about hardware?



    I have noticed that even with the screen dimmed and ALL energy saving features on I get nowhere near the battery life Apple claims on my iBook. I never have. Still better than PCs though <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
  • Reply 5 of 8
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    sorry, thought i'd already replied to this thread.



    old batteries needed to be cycled, fully discharged the whole nine yards. if you didn't do this, they would get a "memory" at anywhere from a quarter to half charge, and that would be the new "empty" point.



    the only way to keep this from happening was to run them all the way down.



    the new batteries do not have this problem, and should be able to be plugged in, run down partway, plugged back in, whatever you like with no problems.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Thanks Alcimedes, I nearly had a heart attack there (myocardial infarction, man that sounds funny!)



    Well your description of older batteries sure sounds right, since I have three 520c's here and their batteries last minutes
  • Reply 7 of 8
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    batteries will also age, and over time hold less and less of a charge.



    one thing you might want to look into are some apps out there that will "reset" an old batteries memory for those old laptops of yours.



    you could probably get them back up to at least 30 min. to an hour.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    gregggregg Posts: 261member
    first question: it's maintenance
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