Forums | MacLife

How many mAh?

You can go to Apple Menu>About This Mac>System Profiler>Power

It's getting up there in cycle count. Probably in fair condition but maybe in a few months you'll be wanting a new battery.

2,363 mAh is about halfway from a new battery so I'd say iStat is reporting properly and the battery is in fair condition.

Anything under 2,500 mAh when we do a diagnostic and we will usually quote the customer for a new battery.

Short of not using the battery there isn't much you can do. Calibration enables your laptop to more accurately estimate the remaining battery life for the current charge and has little to do with extending the battery's overall lifespan. People forget that after all we are dealing with a component that eventually does wear out under normal use.

If you have reason to suspect that your battery is a lemon in particular--say, it cannot maintain a charge after only a few months use--then complain to Apple. There have been some rather large cases recently where the original battery maker (Sony) had accidentally "poisoned" their batteries and the laptop companies involved--including Apple--replaced millions of their defective batteries. Even if Apple will not replace it now, it make take a while before a manufacturing problem is determined--so hang onto the old battery for a while after you replace it with a new one.

mitstoshi wrote:

The battery is 78 months old.

Thats 6.5 years ... I don't expect to keep a laptop battery more than 3 - 4 years of daily use.

You might check with Other World Computing to get a high-capacity replacement for your iBook or PowerBook. As yet OWC does not offer a similar replacement for MacBooks or MacBook Pros.