I thought I’d blog about this for a couple of reasons:
1) Because I should really be blogging more anyways
2) I googled around when this started happening and didn’t see anything like it; so, here’s hoping someone else will find this useful at some point.
I woke up Monday morning, unplugged my MacBook from the wall, plopped down somewhere comfortable, and began typing away. After a few minutes I realized that the battery meter was showing that I had less than an hour and a half of battery time left. This was very strange, and a bit unnerving, as I usually get around four hours of life under my normal usage pattern. I thought it might be a process eating a ton of CPU and killing my battery life, but I restarted and still the meter read "1:17" or something along those lines. Next I removed the battery and replaced it, still reading only a bit over an hour of battery time for an 85-90% charged battery. So, I fired up coconutBattery (A wonderful app, I recommend all of coconut-flavour.com’s ap
ps!) and sure enough, my total potential capacity had apparently dropped to 50% of the original. (When I checked this the other day it was in the mid-high 90s.) Great, the battery is dead or dying, here’s hoping AppleCare has pity. (Technically, I’m told, it doesn’t cover "consumables" such as batteries.) A painless ten minute phone call later, a brand new battery is on the way from Apple, gratis. I love this company!
So, oh well, going to have to suffer with one and a half hours of battery life for a couple of days, right? Well, maybe not! This is the most baffling part: this evening the laptop started showing a much more normal battery life, and it has continued to do so. Even coconutBattery has updated to reflect as much, putting my total potential capacity at around 90% of the original.
What in the world is going on here? Is my MacBook battery possessed?
I’ll update this post if it continues the antics.
[Still waiting to hear back from that place about the job.]
August 5, 2007 at 11:56 pm
[...] Weird MacBook Battery Problem << Josiah’s Thoughts Weird MacBook Battery Problem. Posted January 9, 2007. I thought I’d blog about this for a couple of reasons:. 1) Because I should really be blogging more … <http://josiah.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/weird-macbook-battery-problem/> [...]
September 3, 2007 at 12:47 am
You may not have heard of ‘THE’ macbook battery problem for which Apple announced a replacement plan. You can find links to Apple solutions, pictures (of extreme problems) and other details at:
http://www.macbookbatteryproblem.com
Best,
Woolwit