06-22-2010, 11:20 PM

I have a late 2008 MBP unibody and the battery life is getting really short (1h 30m - 2h with average use) particularly when I compare it to my girlfriends current MBP!

I have tried all the recommended changes to the settings to prolong the battery life but I think the battery may have had it. I did check the condition of the battery using coconut battery and it's had 160 cycles (I thought that the maximum was 300ish).

Do any of you guys with the same setup get really low battery life? Is this something I just have to put up with?

I have had a quick look at replacement batterys but it seems like quite a lot of cash just to find out that it's just a bit of a dated computer now. Have any of you found any uprated batterys that are compatible or even cheaper equivelant batterys that I could try without spending the $200?

Are any of the newer macbook batterys compatible with a bit of modification??

Thanks in advance

06-23-2010, 12:04 AM

I have a Late 2008 MBP 5,1 512MB GPU and noticed that I had a rather lower than expected battery life. It's spent most of it's life plugged into the wall and the battery is rarely used as the sole power source. Recently, I found myself toting it around more often and the battery life stunk. Long story short, I did a SMC reset and PRAM reset (Google it or search Apple's website). Either one or the other (or both) did the trick as I have noticed battery life is apparently getting longer the more I use it without the power cord. I currently have 49 cycles on it and have gone from 94% health to 99% health in about a week of running on the battery for an hour or so every other night. Hope that helps.

EDIT: Other World Computing macsales.com generally has decent prices on replacement batteries and are known to stand behind their products very well.