Weird battery problem macbook

[MR_MU53NDO]

The battery in my macbook white unibody late 2009 seems to be having some problems. Even though it claims to have only been through 487 cycles (despite being almost 5 yrs old), the battery health is at 63%, and it only lasts about 3 hours, compared to its original 7 hour life. Obviously, this has caused the "service battery" warning to come up, as the battery is supposed to last for at least 1000 cycles.

Is it worth buying a generic replacement battery for this laptop, or will a replacement provide the same sort of usage time as the current battery?

 

[shiver]

Battery health and lifetime can depend entirely on how it is used. You can try and improve the health somewhat by completely draining the battery from 100% to 0%, leave it for a few hours (perhaps overnight) with no power, and then charge up fully in the morning. It won't bring the health up to 100% again but you may see some improvement.

Doing this regularly (I do it every 3-4 weeks) will keep a new battery healthy too.

 

[MR_MU53NDO]

Battery health and lifetime can depend entirely on how it is used. You can try and improve the health somewhat by completely draining the battery from 100% to 0%, leave it for a few hours (perhaps overnight) with no power, and then charge up fully in the morning. It won't bring the health up to 100% again but you may see some improvement.

Doing this regularly (I do it every 3-4 weeks) will keep a new battery healthy too.

I have tried to do this maybe once or twice, bringing battery health up from 58% to its current 63%, but (correct me if I'm wrong) I've also heard that batteries in this type of macbook apparently don't need re-calibrating (if that's what you meant)