MacBook battery health...

While my new battery is good, it seems as though my power adapter, when I have it hooked up to my external monitor it only shows 96%, I unplug it an replug it in thinking it would go back to 100% since it's charged but it doesn't... WHy?

I bought my MacBook in October 2006. Over time I noticed the battery life slowly diminishing with age, which I expected. However round about the two year mark (Nov '08) it suddenly started reducing alarmingly quickly until I was left with approximately an hour and a half of juice if I was lucky and way under an hour for any power intensive activities. I looked up the details in system profiler and iStat Pro and my battery health was 56% with a cycle count of 278. I did a comprehensive battery calibration as per the instructions on at apple.com/batteries and got the health up to 77%, cycle count 279 but it still didn't last much beyond an hour and half...

Yesterday I finally got so annoyed with it that I took it in to the Apple Store to see what they would say. I was fully expecting the stock answer, 'It's over two years old sir, batteries do that, you'll have to buy a new one I'm afraid' However instead they plugged in a special iPod Nano which appeared to have some sort of battery test software on it and immediately confirmed that they would indeed replace the battery free of charge (I have applecare but it didn't appear that this was necessary), no hassle, no fuss, job done!

But it got better when they noticed a small crack in the top case where my palms rest on the machine. The genius offered to fix that too and said they could do it that day for collection later. So a few hours and call to my mobile later, I was back in the shop picking up what felt like a brand new MacBook! Not only had they replaced the plastic top cover but I also now have a spanking new (non grubby!) keyboard and a brand new trackpad and button (my old trackpad had a big dent in it and the button was beginning to stick!) Not sure if the apple engineers had a choice in this or if those two things are attached to the top cover, but either way I am now one very satisfied Apple customer.

Wow that is my experience almost to a tee!

I'm glad Apple takes care of their customers

how do you get all these figures .. I would like to see mine too !!