According to Apple: "Battery Lifespan A properly maintained PowerBook or iBook battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity after 300 full charge and discharge cycles. You may choose to replace your battery when it no longer holds sufficient charge to meet your needs." "A charge cycle means using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge. For instance, you could listen to your iPod for a few hours one day, using half its power, and then recharge it fully. If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two, so you may take several days to complete a cycle. Each time you complete a charge cycle, it diminishes battery capacity slightly, but you can put both notebook and iPod batteries through many charge cycles before they will only hold 80% of original battery capacity. As with other rechargeable batteries, you may eventually need to replace your battery." If you're running Tiger, open System Profiler (what? can't find it? Use Spotlight!) and look for the Power section under Hardware. The Battery Information section should tell you how many charging cycles your battery has gone through. Here's mine.
here's mine--i don't know what the benchmarks are, but it doesn't look too bad for an albook battery that's 28 months old Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4151 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4000 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12413 Cycle Count: 111
Been puzzled by the way my battery's been behaving lately. Around two weeks ago, it could still charge up to 100%. However, for the past week, the highest I could get it up to was 86%. Good thing this thread came up. It turns out I've already gone thru 309 cycles, and my powerbook's only 15 months old. I just drained my battery and I'm now charging it. Here's my battery stats: Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3047 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 706 Amperage (mA): 1312 Voltage (mV): 11160 Cycle Count: 309
hi, quicksilver--could it be that you're doing what we caution muggers here NOT to do, which is to put your 'book through repeated charge/drain cycles? that's recommended for the first time you use your battery--i think to calibrate it--but after that, just keep your 'book plugged in and on sleep whenever possible. i can't think of any other reason for the relative good health (knock on wood) of my battery 28 months running. (my albook's the second-oldest in this country, by a day , and yes, it's a workhorse, i've never babied it, and it's on or on sleep practically 24/7.)
thanks for the advise, penmanila. fortunately, i read through the relevant threads here in philmug when i first acquired my powerbook, so i've been keeping it plugged in whenever possible. however, i have to bring it with me to meetings and sometimes it's just not possible to plug in, so there have been times when my battery was fully drained.
Here's mine: Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 2699 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2699 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12482 Cycle Count: 186
Butch, let's trade batteries! Amazing, 4.151? Wow! Are you sure that's your original battery? FYI, your 'book is older than mine and I got to replace my battery less than a year ago. You're a very lucky Mac user. Here's mine. I think I've been abusing: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3334 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2922 Amperage (mA): 939 Voltage (mV): 12396 Cycle Count: 337 [Edited on 6-25-2005 by elbertc]
Sigh. My laptop is only 20 months old but my battery stats look so poor compared to penmanila's. Here are my stats: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3399 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2758 Amperage (mA): -1180 Voltage (mV): 11397 Cycle Count: 374
Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4265 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4155 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12491 Cycle Count: 50 powerbook 15. 1ghz with 1gb ram. [Edited on 6-25-2005 by hungryalien]
ooops--my bad! so sorry elbert, your question below suddenly reminded me that i did have a spare battery lying around, and i've been exchanging them now and then! i forgot what the last time was--maybe six months ago? so i looked for it and found it, and discovered (see below) that i've most probably been using the newer batt recently. here are the stats of the other/older (28-month old, used maybe 18-20 months total?). so sorry to make all your batts look bad with that first readout here's the reality check--still not bad at all, i guess Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3926 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2653 Amperage (mA): 1186 Voltage (mV): 12510 Cycle Count: 99
this is my profile Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4531 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4522 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12505 Cycle Count: 9 1 month of use of pbook. pwede na ba?
Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4599 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4214 Amperage (mA): 1003 Voltage (mV): 12493 Cycle Count: 5 hehehe this is less than a month. let's say around 3 weeks? is this a good rate?
Here's mine: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5187 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4942 Amperage (mA): -2094 Voltage (mV): 11939 Cycle Count: 77 1.33Ghz 17" PowerBook
I've abused mine. I won't even care to post the details. Even though, my iBook's battery is still holding up pretty well. 2 years and counting.
Still Impressive, Butch. And if you combine your two batteries' cycle count, they add up to 210. Significantly less than mine. Thank you Jason, for posting a higher cycle count than mine. For a while there, I was seriously considering going into rehab. phew! EDIT: wait a minute, ako pa rin ang pinaka abusado--it was just last December that I replaced my battery Hi I'm Elbert, and I'm a 'bookaholic... [Edited on 6-25-2005 by elbertc]
Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4171 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2685 Amperage (mA): -1228 Voltage (mV): 11417 Cycle Count: 320 hmm here is mine. my pb is turning 1 year in july. was just curious, so is it recommended to keep it on sleep rather than switching it off? how can one lessen the cycle counts?
TiBook 867Mhz G4 15": Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3523 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 3332 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 16562 Cycle Count: 216
Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4410 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4402 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12619 Cycle Count: 65 My iBook will turn one year old on July 31.. time flies soo fast..
Battery Information: Battery Installed: Yes First low level warning: No Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4595 Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4573 Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12589 Cycle Count: 14 looks good to me
