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New battery, turns off at low battery-not sleep

Any help greatly appreciated.

New battery and trying to calibrate it. Turned PB off, installed new battery, plugged it in and fully charged it. Turned PB on, unplugged it and used it. I got the warning about the low battery message to plug into AC power or it would soon go to sleep. So, I kept on using it to force the sleep. Instead after a bit it simply shut down. No pulsing light. I charged it back up (overnight) and turned it on and when I go to 'More Info' in the Apple menu and look at the Power information I see:

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4544
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4379
Amperage (mA): -1428
Voltage (mV): 12105
Cycle Count: 0

No first low level warning and no upping the cycle count. What should be my next step? I've heard about possibly resetting the PRAM, is this one of those times?

(BTW, I am able to put the PB to sleep when I select Sleep from the apple menu. That works fine.)

Message was edited by: CeeZeeCZ

PBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jun 4, 2009 4:26 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 4, 2009 5:08 AM

A Power Management Unit (PMU) reset may help: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431
17 replies

Jun 4, 2009 5:19 AM in response to BGreg

BGreg, thanks for the suggestion with the link.

I'm running the battery down again just to see if last time was a fluke (one can hope). If it still happens, after the recharge, I'll do the PMU reset.

I don't think I'd removed the last battery in years! The battery I replaced was the original and had over 600 cycles on it. I'm pretty sure I was running 10.3 then. So it's gone to 10.4 and who knows what else happened.

Jun 4, 2009 5:43 AM in response to CeeZeeCZ

I just checked the Power info in the 'about this mac' again. This is after I've been using the PB for an hour or so and the 'Cycle Count' has been updated but 'First low level warning' is still a No:

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4544
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2385
Amperage (mA): -2004
Voltage (mV): 11127
Cycle Count: 1

Jun 4, 2009 8:05 AM in response to kmac1036

Thanks to you both for helping me understand what is going on with this new battery. It seems to be working correctly I guess. I can live with it shutting down instead of going to sleep. I never really get into that situation. I'd been doing the monthly calibration - do you think it is a good idea??

I don't think I need to reset the PMU as it doesn't sound like it would help. So I'm just going to run it down a few times to give it a bit of a workout. It sure gets to the green light a whole lot quicker than my old one.

Jun 4, 2009 11:13 AM in response to BGreg

I'm just starting my third discharge so that should do it. I just unplugged it to let it run down and it's displaying 3:20 for time left. See how that goes, too. The brightness is on half but I do a lot of online work and I know that takes power. Of course, like everyone, I was hoping for more ....

Do you do the monthly re-calibrate?

Jun 4, 2009 2:56 PM in response to CeeZeeCZ

I use my system enough that I deep discharge once or twice a month. In their note on batteries, Apple says whats important is to keep the electrons flowing, which means minimally a once a month deep discharge. You've probably read this note already: http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html. If I remember in your initial post, your battery had around 600 cycles on it, which is outstanding ... keep doing whatever you've been doing!

Jun 4, 2009 3:16 PM in response to BGreg

Yeah, it's only been the last few weeks that it really started dropping battery time drastically. It went from fairly okay to less than an hour in a very short period of time. So when I checked to see what the charge cycles number read (last count 638), I was amazed. Then in over about a week's time it dropped even more.

The last couple of years I started doing the monthly deep discharges in a sporadic manner. I set up an iCal monthly alert but quite a few times it just wouldn't be convenient and I'd skip it for that month. But for the first three years I didn't do anything special.

Jun 5, 2009 5:09 AM in response to kmac1036

Only the apple ones will put the machine to sleep, any others will just abruptly shut the machine down.


This has never been my experience. Since 1994, I've bought several third-party batteries for several different Powerbooks, and all have behaved properly vis-a-vis sleep on low battery. They've all been bought from reliable Mac-centric vendors and borne reputable brand names, and none cost less than $90. I've never owned a third-party battery that failed to trigger sleep as it neared full discharge, except when it was very old and tired.

I have, however, seen many reports here of cheap third-party batteries picked up on Ebay, some of them bearing apparently counterfeit Apple labels, that failed to trigger sleep on low battery, provided false or impossible battery condition readouts, failed to charge, never gave any low-battery warnings, or otherwise misbehaved.

You get what you pay for in Powerbook batteries.

Message was edited by: eww

Jun 5, 2009 9:51 AM in response to eww

So based on this discussion I went ahead and called the company where I got the battery (BatteryHeads.com) and they said it should definitely put the PB to sleep and not just shut down.

They emailed my a return label for free Priority Mail USPS shipping and will send me a replacement battery as soon as they get this one back.

Excellent customer service. Hopefully, no problems with the new one.

New battery, turns off at low battery-not sleep

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