Clamshell battery woes

Randman

Randman

HA! HA! HA!
Howdy,
Last weekend, I charged up my ole clamshell Special Edition Graphite iBook to update the software and use it a little. Well,, I've had it on or on sleep now for almost a week and a half and it runs really well with the power adapter. But as soon as I take it off the juice, it dies quicker than Tom Green's career.
Before last weekend, it had been shut down and disconnected from a power supply for about 2 months, but I had never had any battery problems with it, quite the opposite, in fact.
So, I'm wondering if the slumber fried the battery, or if needs just a really long time to charge back up. And if so, how long? And if there's anyway I can test the battery (and application perhaps)? And what can I do to prevent this in future once I have everything back to running order? I don't mind charging it regularly, but I don't see the point in having it connected all of the time, just to keep the battery from going batty. Cheers.
 
I had a 1st generaion clamshell ibook til around 1/2 year ago (my entrance to the wonderfull 'mac world' and OSX :D )

It shouldn't take more than 2 1/2 hours (rather less) to fully charge the ibook. (this is ~ the time it runs without being connected with the wall adaptor.)

Another thing I noticed, that the plug (Ufo power adaptor -> ibook) needs to be connected very tight, or else my ibook won't charge.

I don't think, that software (sleep mode) is able to damage your hardware/battery.
 
The batt needs to be charged from time to time (even if you don't use it regularly) if you wish to get full life from that batt, but the batt is most likely not recoverable, if it's original. Age affects most all rechargeables, unfortunately. If the battery is past 2-3 years, your best hope is replacing with new batt (do not look for a 'good deal' on a used batt)
 
Oddly enough, the charger was showing green when I got home from work (I've had it charging for a while now. I was using it to rip a couple of CDs I had and put it to sleep. Now it's showing orange on the charger, so the battery's not totally dead because it's giving enough back to change colors.
Now if I could only get it to maintain a charge, it would save a couple of bucks getting a replacement battery (or I could just leave it with the charger since I do rarely use it.
I've thought of selling it, but the prices seem too low these days for what has been (is) a dang good computer.
 
A dying battery sometimes will take a charge, but typically, it's quickly gone after disconnect from the charger. This sort of defeats the purpose of a laptop, if you have to leave it plugged in to use it. Unfortunately, the replacement batts are not cheap.
 
Look for an application called X-Charge (or X Charge, or XCharge?) on versiontracker. It gives you an idea of how your battery behaves, on graphical mode.

The full charge should take 3-3,5 hours.

Have you installed any updates recently on that ibook?
 
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