Has my battery really died after 1 year?

Historia · Mar 4, 2008

I have had my Macbook Pro for about 1 year. Before, I could on one single battery get over 2 hours of work. Now, it dies after like 15 minutes. Is this the battery or something else? I have tried Windows XP, Vista, and Leopard. They all give me the same results. Do I need to buy a new battery?

theonegod · Mar 4, 2008

Have applecare? Been under a year?

cwa107 · Mar 4, 2008

Historia said:
I have had my Macbook Pro for about 1 year. Before, I could on one single battery get over 2 hours of work. Now, it dies after like 15 minutes. Is this the battery or something else? I have tried Windows XP, Vista, and Leopard. They all give me the same results. Do I need to buy a new battery?

If you regularly completely discharge and recharge your battery, one year is a pretty normal lifespan. If it's less than a year, Apple will replace it under warranty. If not, I'd take a look at FastMac's replacement for the MacBook Pro, it's supposed to provide slightly more capacity than the original.

soul.glo · Mar 4, 2008

Hopefully you get it replaced under warranty. If not, that sucks. Sorry to hear.

CPUFreak91 · Mar 8, 2008

Mine was less than a year old before it started having 7-10 minutes of charge. The reason for it was that the battery was swelling.

lifeafter2am · Mar 8, 2008

How many cycles are on it? I got mine replaced after over a year because it had so few cycles on it and was still performing horribly.

joshbrez · Mar 9, 2008

lifeafter2am said:
How many cycles are on it? I got mine replaced after over a year because it had so few cycles on it and was still performing horribly.

This is the important question to answer. Apple should replace the battery for you if it gets little charge after relatively few cycles. The battery on my MBP started going bad after 11 months, with only 40 or so cycles on it. I took it in, the geniuses took one look in System Profiler at how the battery was performing, and replaced it right there. Even if you're out of warranty, I'd bet they might still be willing to fork a new one over to you.

cwa107 mentioned discharging often. In my experience, using the battery regularly actually helps it keep its charge. I'm fairly certain that my original one died because it spent the majority of last summer plugged in on a desk. The one I have now is still 97% healthy, according to Coconut Battery, and I've used it a decent amount over the past 3 months.

cwa107 · Mar 9, 2008

joshbrez said:
This is the important question to answer. Apple should replace the battery for you if it gets little charge after relatively few cycles. The battery on my MBP started going bad after 11 months, with only 40 or so cycles on it. I took it in, the geniuses took one look in System Profiler at how the battery was performing, and replaced it right there. Even if you're out of warranty, I'd bet they might still be willing to fork a new one over to you.

cwa107 mentioned discharging often. In my experience, using the battery regularly actually helps it keep its charge. I'm fairly certain that my original one died because it spent the majority of last summer plugged in on a desk. The one I have now is still 97% healthy, according to Coconut Battery, and I've used it a decent amount over the past 3 months.

It may be anecdotal, but I can say from experience with hundreds of laptops that laptop batteries tend to last longer when they are infrequently fully discharged. I work as a network admin at a decent sized company. We have a couple hundred laptops amongst the offices I support. In many cases, I've seen batteries last 3-4 years when the laptop hasn't been undocked frequently (such is the case with executives, where having a laptop is more of a status symbol than a necessity). Conversely, all of my personal laptops (Apple and otherwise) tend to need a new battery after about 18 months and they are frequently discharged (usually daily). Again, it's anecdotal, but it's been my experience nonetheless.

MacService · Mar 10, 2008

I charge up/down twice a day, and the max I'll get out of my battery is about 10 months before it starts not being able to hold a charge.