Is it dead?

I have a mac book that has been having battery issues. My mac will only stay on while plugged into power.

I bought a replacement battery on buy.com:

Laptop Battery For Apple Macbook 13"" A1185 A1181 5600mAh White
Brand New


After installing the replacement battery, my battery indicator / power cable flips between two states:

The battery has a bolt and my power adapter goes orange.


&

The battery has the plugged in indicated and my power adapter goes green.

For the second situation (battery with plug / adapter goes green) if I unplug in the power my mac still shuts off.

It appears to me that the battery is at 71% which seems to be accurate with the battery indicator (4 out of 5 lights are lit).

After looking online I have already tried the usual suspects: resetting the PRAM, SMC, and installing the Battery Update.

I'm running out of ideas.

My questions are:

Does this sound like something that can be fixed by replacing the battery connector / sleep sensor or something else?


THANK YOU!!

Was the machine exposed to water at some point?

No, I'm very protective.

I think the first thing you should try is to exchange the battery. If it does it even after you've given the battery the benefit of the doubt, I'd say it's probably an issue with the charging circuitry. If that's the case, you would need to have the logic board replaced, which likely wouldn't be economically viable given the value of the machine.

I was afraid you would say that. So replacing the battery connector / sleep sensor wouldn't do any good. Is there a way to test either way?

The battery connector itself is pretty simple. If the contacts look clean and free of corrosion or physical damage, it's probably fine.

I'm not sure how the sleep sensor would really play into this as the charging circuit works regardless of the sleep/wake state.

Just my opinion, of course.

Frankly, there's a lot of companies that recycle batteries, installing new cells in a used or lookalike case. Sometimes they're OK, sometimes they're junk. So, unless it's an all-original battery, I would say it's suspect until you've had the chance to try another.