06-03-2004, 07:40 AM

Hi, i've had my powerbook a little over a week now and i'm very happy with it, even though today is the first time i've checked it out properly since i've been busy with my job and training courses, etc. Right, i got my Powerbook last week, opened it up right out of the box and powered it up. Obviously it's gonna have some juice in the battery, so i wanted to run it down, charge it up fully and run it down again to calibrate it. I did this, but when i went to my iTunes, one 4 minute track knocked off 50nins of the battery time. So what the problem here? did i mess up the battery or do i need to alter some settings to get a decent battery time?

Thanks

06-03-2004, 08:04 AM

Originally Posted by citystar2k

Hi, i've had my powerbook a little over a week now and i'm very happy with it, even though today is the first time i've checked it out properly since i've been busy with my job and training courses, etc. Right, i got my Powerbook last week, opened it up right out of the box and powered it up. Obviously it's gonna have some juice in the battery, so i wanted to run it down, charge it up fully and run it down again to calibrate it. I did this, but when i went to my iTunes, one 4 minute track knocked off 50nins of the battery time. So what the problem here? did i mess up the battery or do i need to alter some settings to get a decent battery time?

Thanks

Give it a few charge cycles, and see if it works itself out. Also, are you burning tracks in iTunes, or just playing them?

06-03-2004, 09:46 AM

When you first get it you are supposed to give it a full charge before using the battery (you can use it plugged in)

06-03-2004, 10:29 AM

Apple states in the manual that you are supposed to plug it in and charge it all the way (as trpnmonkey41 mentioned) then you let it run on battery until it shuts down by itself, ignore the low battery warning. Once it goes to sleep plug it back in and recharge it all the way.

The Apple dealer where I bought mine opened it and installed the ram I also bought. They then plugged it in and did all the updates and verified the ram etc. I had a chance to also check and make sure there were no blemishes and that everything worked as it should and make sure that the screen did not have any dead/stuck pixels. It was basically charged all the way by the time that everything was done and I took it home and left it plugged in over night, then I let it drain all the way.

Try recharging and calibrating yours and see if it changes

06-03-2004, 11:03 AM

i'm recharging it right now. Somebody told me it's advisable to run the battery right down from a full charge every so often, is this ok? With my Acer laptop, i dont have the battery in as it's recommended not to do this, and to fully charge the battery, run it down, give it another full charge, and then take it out again. I guess i now know that PowerBook batteries run on a different principle.

Padawan, i wasn't burning any tracks or anything, i just imported 700 tracks, but i was still charging up then. Hopefully the battery will be okay after a few charges.

Can anybody give me a guide on how much battery i would get from different applications? such as watching a dvd, burning a cd, broswing on the internet etc.

Thanks.

06-03-2004, 01:16 PM

Go to www.batteryuniversity.com and read all the info on lithium ion batteries, may give more insight into batteries and advantages and disadvantages of the different types.

Yes Apple says to calibrate from time to time.

I to have been moving some of my music files to the PowerBook, right now 1700 tracks and over 10gig Still have at least the same amount left to copy but not sure if I will or not. I copied all the stuff that I listen too the most so for now I may call it good...

06-03-2004, 04:04 PM

However.....the real issue with Li-ion batteries is that no one really has one method of taking care of them. Some say calibrating it from time to time is good, others say it is bad. The most important thing is, you battery time will fluxuate a lot while you're using it...it might drop 50min at one point, and then go up another 50mins a little while later...batteries are fairly unpredictable, and are still a technology that people haven't quite worked out as well as the technology that depend ont he batteries.