Macbook Battery

itsallaboutyou

itsallaboutyou

itsallaboutyou

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Joined
11 Mar 2005
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1,168
Hi All,

Just wondering if you could help me out. I recently bought a macbook - which I love! However, yesterday I used it on the battery (only for an hour). I then shut my mac down as I knew I wouldnt be using it for a day.

I came back to it today - and everything is fine - its just that the battery indicator will only go to 99% - and as a consequence the light on my magsafe adapter is orange. I'm pretty sure (and the manual backs me up on this - as far as I recall??) that when the mac is fully charged and running of mains that it should be green. Is this right?

I only ask as it has been on 99% for about 3 hours now and the magsafe light is orange still..

Any help would be appreciated!

*apologies if I'm being thick as two short planks!

Tom*:)
 
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Yeah it should be green when fully charged and using it at the same time but I've noticed it takes ages to charge when using it and charging at the same time. Easy more than 3 hours from nearly flat. Use the istat widget and it tells you the health of your battery and some other useful things.
 
i must say these macbook batteries are brilliant :) i have used mine for a good 4 and a half hours before it ran out of steam, i spose the small screen helps with that...

plus in coconut battery, after a fresh calibration of the battery, my capacity seems pretty damn good so that helps the cause too i'm thinking :)

CoconutBattery-141207.png

(then again, my coconut battery may be knackered cuz it always gets the "battery charging" and "charger connected" indicators wrong...)
 
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That capacity level looks "poor" to say the least.

Either the battery is on the way out or it needs a good calibration! :eek:
 
Mr_White said:
four cycles in over a year? I'm guessing it's not mobile very often :p
Click to expand...

Its more mobile than you might think, but only around the house. ;)

To be fair the battery is really about 12 months old as the first one needed replacing. But still, over a year I didnt realise how little times it had been discharged.

I just posted it as an example of someone who hasn't obviously calibrated their battery. :)
 
A quick question regarding the MacBooks battery - i've been using mine and leaving it plugged in constantly for the past week or so as i've been working from home.

The status is "charged" all the time. Is this OK? Am I shortening the battery? I do unplug it and run it down before charging every couple of weeks.
 
Should be OK. For those that bother to look in the manual Apple advise a discharge and recharge once a month to keep the battery active and the calibration correct. Li-Ion batteries have an average lifespan of 3-4 years whether they get used or not. A bit of light usage to keep it active helps, batter it and it'll wear out very quickly.

My MBP has about 220 cycles on it and is about 65% of original capacity after 14 months (2nd replacement battery). This gives me 2 hours if I'm lucky when I got an easy 3hrs 30 when it was new.

I've seen some ThinkPads at work that have 3 cycles on them after a couple of years usage in a dock. Invariably the calibration is all to **** when they actually use the battery for the first time so the helpdesk get a phone call complaining when they get 20 mins of use on the train down to an important meeting before it abruptly turns off ;)
 
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