Is Snow Leopard "Service Battery" covered by AppleCare?

Condition: Check Battery

Your battery is bad. Call Apple Care. Only they can tell you if they will cover under warranty.

Hi asmeurer,

As indicated by the above poster, you need to contact AppleCare regarding coverage eligibility. Don't be fooled by the cycle count, just because it's below 300 that doesn't automatically mean that the battery is not defective or consumed/depleted. Keeping the machine constantly plugged in can be just as bad for the battery as constantly discharging and recharging the battery.

Call into AppleCare let them determine your eligibility, it's a free phone call in the US. The FCC is about 50% of what it should be.

Your battery is not at fault and the easy way to prove it is roll back to Leopard or boot to an external drive using Leopard. My battery since Snow Leopard went from 2:30 minutes and degraded daily. Now I get less than 30 minutes on Snow Leopard. I also get the Service battery and like others have tried resetting SMC etc..

When booting from Leopard I get my entire battery life left. If you google search you will find some have better battery life and others decreased. There does not seem to be a pattern and it happens on newer and older Macbook and Macbook Pro laptops. Apple needs to recognize this is a wide spread problem.

I have exactly the same problem on both my macbook Pro's since the upgrade to SL. Brand new battery gives the same message.

I know my battery isn't dead. I only use my laptop for DJ'ing. It's only got 57 cycles, yet I'm only getting 1.5 hours instead of 3.5 hours.

This happened after I installed Snow Leopard.

Is Apple still denying this? There's another post with 23 pages worth of user complaints.

I supposed I could roll back to Leopard and demand a refund on SL...

Have you been calibrating the battery based on your user manual schedule?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/20865.html

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/27540.html

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/29198.html

I had very similar circumstances. Was getting 3-4 hours (being power conservative) on MacBook Pro (pre unibody) until installed Snow Leopard 10.6 and then 10.6.1.

Then I was getting an hour at the most and the battery icon was saying "service battery". I did all the calibration and got no where.

Took laptop (which was out of warranty by 4 months) into Genius Bar at Apple and he said there was a battery replacement program of some description on my battery (or warranty extension on my models) and he ran a hardware test then said he would replace the battery for free.

He did so on the spot and I was out of the store in about 10 mins.

Great service and very happy - particularly when the battery was out of warranty and only had 92 cycles on it.

Here something similar,
Bought a refurbished macbook pro 13'' unibody which looked perfectly fine on the 1st few days, battery very much as expected.
I upgraded memory up to 4 gbs and HardDrive up to 320 gbs.
In the last few week I can see battery dropping in performance and falling up to 20% in just 1 hour. Maximun battery life is about 3 hours and 1/2 which I find surprising considering what I read and being a new system

Further details as follows:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP55.00AC.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.47f2
Serial Number (system): 7 **EUG*D



Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number: 9G9340H9C8VPA
Manufacturer: DP
Device name: bq20z451
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0003
Hardware Revision: 0002
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 3222
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5037
Health Information:
Cycle count: 18
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1456
Voltage (mV): 11397

System Power Settings:

AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Current Power Source: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Reduce Brightness: Yes

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

Connected: No
Charging: No


any idea and recommendation?
Las night i tried to re-calibrate battery without luck, even it lost another 1%.

Thanks very much

I also have a "Service Battery" alert on my toolbar.

I am very confused as my computer is only 11 months old. I didn't have that warning until upgrading to Snow Leopard.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782 Mac OS X v10.6: About the Battery menu bar extra for portable Macs




!http://i45.tinypic.com/jl0z95.jpg!

New battery. Battery is fully charged. Still have "X" in menu bar. Read this at MacFixit.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10426564-263.html?tag=mncol;txt

Waiting for 10.6.3 to see what happens. Rob