10.2.4 Killing Battery Life

Milanek writes "The iBook/PowerBook battery seems to be permanently incapacitated by the 10.2.4 update. " I had this problem as well - had to get my battery replaced last week. It was a painless exchange, but still annonying.

Comments

I had the same happen to me

[davesag]

I swapped my new laptop battery for an older one that was working a-okay. The old one, although reporting full charge, was run down to absolute flat in about an hour. I charged it again overnight and retried and after a few tries it runs flat now in under 30 mts. So i swapped back to my new battery which is lasting me a good 3 hrs or so. I was happy to blame the old battery (it was made in 2000) but it does seem odd that this behaviour should coincide with upgrading to osx10.2.4 - and so many others are also reporting this problem now.

What's happening?

[2nd Post!]

I just got my PowerBook battery replaced, and this was the situation:

Charge to 100%
Unplug
At about 70%, the battery would instantaneously go to zero and sleep.

Rinse and repeat.

However, what the article *seems* to describe is batteries not charging fully, or batteries with reduced lifespan.

My new replacement battery has a lifespan of 4 hours and 20 minutes
My old spare battery has a lifespan of 3 hours and 40 minutes
The dead replaced battery had a lifespan of about 20 minutes before dropping to zero, even though it reported a full charge.

Is this what others are seeing? The 10.2.4 problem doesn't seem to sound like any of these. The new battery is fine, the spare battery just sounds old, and the dead battery sounds like it was broken.

Same old story

[jcbphi]

These claims seem to crop up everytime Apple releases a new update to OS X. I remember reading the exact same claims when 10.2.3 was released, in the Apple support forums.

Lithium Ion batteries (the type used in the iBook/TiBook) simply don't last very long. Best estimates I've heard is 300-500 charge cycles. Depending on how often you charge your battery, its easy to go through this problem.

I had awful problems with my iBook battery, after only 5 months. In a matter of weeks, it went from 4 hours of battery life to under an hour. But when I did the math out, my estimated charge cycles in those 5 months was around 400.

Nothing to do with the OS update...just a battery at the end of its life. Good thing it was still under warrenty...after a few calls to Apple tech support I got a new battery.

Something is wrong here...

[CottonEyedJoe]

I'm typing this from my iBook dual USB (2001 500 MHz) on the original battery. I was about to buy a new battery until I saw this article because of recent rediculously short battery life I've been getting (30 mins or less) Well, I tried something after I saw this article and, lo and behold, I've been running on 0% battery life (incl the green LED's) for the past 30 minutes. I'd be curious to know how many of those who report very short battery life have tried going beyond the system warning... cause mine is still running.

how to maximize battery life?

[zarqman]

okay. i'm seeing several comments about battery life and that liion batteries should be treated differently from nicad and nimh batteries.

i know in nicad days, it was best to let them run down and then charge them fully. from my experience with cell phones and nimh batteries, that's a relatively good idea there with them too, although their propensity to develop memory was weaker.

but, what's best with modern liion batteries? should i keep my laptop on the charger whenever possible? let it run down to xx% and then charge it? is there a difference in how i should treat them in my cell phone vs. my laptop?