Battery Question (Comparison)

jacob woottenjacob wootten
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I have the 800 MHz iBook (G3) laptop, and it has a 42 watt hour battery, and I want to get a new battery (mine is dying), and they have the new 50 watt hour iBook G4 battery which is nice, and I have seen some sites have these 4000 mAh batteries, which I would think would be 40 watt hours. Am I correct in that, or is it different? Please answer!



EDIT: To clarify 800 MHz iBook, not clamshell.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    jacob woottenjacob wootten Posts: 30member
    Come on, surely someone knows if 50 watt hours is greater than 4000 mAh.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    They're totally different units. Amperes are a measure of current, watts of power. Power is the rate at which work is done (Joules per second, in the case of a Watt), so Watt-hours is a measure of how long the battery can sustain a given output of work. Current is just how much charge can flow out of the battery at once. You need to know the voltage to figure out how current relates to work. Power = voltage x current.



    In crude terms, amperes measure the size of the spigot on the water tank; watt-hours describe how big the tank is. So compare watt-hours to watt-hours. The newest iBook batteries are 50 W*hrs, which are a significant improvement over the old batteries. I have one of the new ones in my 600mHz; it's nice.
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