Topic: Help with macbook battery (Read 149 times)

  • Avatar of dark_crystalis
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So yeah last night my battery started acting very weird saying it was dead yet my laptop kept working for a good 3-4 hours before not even dying. Then when I turned it on the battery seems to work fine. My laptop is getting pretty old (got it in 2007) so I was wondering if I should perhaps change the battery?

Specs:
Battery Information:

  Battery Installed:   Yes
  First low level warning:   No
  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   1536
  Remaining Capacity (mAh):   0
  Amperage (mA):   0
  Voltage (mV):   11602
  Cycle Count:   211

The model I have is the 13" macbook MA700LL/A

Thanks for you help!

P.S. I just moved to Europe and kinda cause an electric sucharge to my DS by using a converter without ground (since the one with ground was being used by my laptop). Is it possible to just buy a new DS battery or it's completely fucked?
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I had the battery on my macbook go out within a year of owning the computer.  It suddenly dropped from like about 80% battery health to a matter of 35% to 15% over the period of a few days.  They sent me a replacement one out of warranty (But for free, long story...) and that one lasted about another 8 months before it stopped charging and I had to get another one.  I'm on my third one right now, and I'm at about 75% health with it on 211 cycles.    I'm surprised that having owned your computer for longer than I have, you have significantly less cycles on your battery. 

Chances are if you call in, you're going to have to have to do stuff like try resetting the PRAM and what not first before they will do anything about it.  (I forget what exactly this does, but it helped my battery last about a month longer or something before it was low enough that they would replace it under its first warranty)  I forget how to do it too, but you could probably google it.  What program are you using to determine your battery specifications?  Try downloading iStat Pro and see what it says about the health of your battery?
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Mine's at 31% health. I should probably just buy a new one I guess?
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most likely that would be the best choice.  However, if you want to get a little bit more out of your battery or something, you can try leaving it unplugged until the battery dies, and then let it sit for another 3-4 hours (given that you actually have the time to do this and don't need your computer for a while or something) while it is in its sort of sleep/hibernation mode to kind of drain everything in the battery, and then recharge it.  Doing this would get me about another 10 or so % health for a few weeks. 
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Should I trust getting a battery via ebay? And would something like this be fine? http://viewitem.eim.ebay.no/Battery_for_Apple_MacBook_13_inch_MA700LLA_MA700TAA/370440850787/item

I've never changed the battery for a laptop before so I'm really not sure how that works haha.
  • Avatar of dada
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I bought a third party battery for my Powerbook G4 a while ago and it works just fine. Generally you can trust eBay sellers that have a 99.5%+ rating and at least like 2500 sales.
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I got mine in 2007 and it's just now telling me that the condition is "replace soon", so I'll probably be getting one soon.  What company made your third party battery Dada?  I thought about getting a third party one (I have a 13-inch regular macbook) but the ones I saw all had awful reviews so I wouldn't want to get one without knowing for sure it works.  Though this one still keeps a halfway decent charge, I just don't wanna risk it goin out on me.
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