g4 17 battery problem, please help

it would drain normally to around 50% and without warning the laptop would sleep.
mcosmi wrote on :

I have inherited a couple year old g4, and i got it with 2 batteries. I assume on is the original and the second purchased later. First i noticed that one(the original i presume) had problems. It would be charged to 100% and i would start working off battery power and it would drain normally to around 50% and without warning the laptop would sleep. When i would plug it in and bring it back up, i would see that the battery was on 0% and i would start charging it back up and this happens every time.

After seeing this, i assumed the 2nd battery was purchased because of this problem, so i just always used the 'newer' one. I had no problems until about a week ago when i charged it up fully and when i tried to power the laptop up on the road it wouldnt respond. i found a plug and booted it up to find that my date was reset to 1969 and that while plugged in my battery is stuck on 44%. It wont charge up and the second i pull the plug the g4 dies and when i plug in and boot the date and time have once again revertted to 1969.

This really sucks because now i have 2 batteries that are messed up and i dont really wanna spend the 150bucks for a new battery unless i absolutely have to. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the hell i should/could do about these issues?

Any help would be MUCH APPRECIATED!!

Mike mco...@redacted.invalid

Jolly Roger replied on :

On 2007-04-14 00:28:35 -0500, "mcosmi@redacted.invalid" mcosmi@redacted.invalid said:

I have inherited a couple year old g4, and i got it with 2 batteries. I assume on is the original and the second purchased later. First i noticed that one(the original i presume) had problems. It would be charged to 100% and i would start working off battery power and it would drain normally to around 50% and without warning the laptop would sleep. When i would plug it in and bring it back up, i would see that the battery was on 0% and i would start charging it back up and this happens every time.

What you have described is textbook behavior for a battery nearing the end of its life span.

After seeing this, i assumed the 2nd battery was purchased because of this problem, so i just always used the 'newer' one. I had no problems until about a week ago when i charged it up fully and when i tried to power the laptop up on the road it wouldnt respond. i found a plug and booted it up to find that my date was reset to 1969 and that while plugged in my battery is stuck on 44%. It wont charge up and the second i pull the plug the g4 dies and when i plug in and boot the date and time have once again revertted to 1969.

Unfortunately, this may also be an indication that the battery is near the end of its life span. It's possible the original owner purchased these two batteries when he purchased the computer.

This really sucks because now i have 2 batteries that are messed up and i dont really wanna spend the 150bucks for a new battery unless i absolutely have to. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the hell i should/could do about these issues?

I suppose there are other properties you might examine to give you a better feel for whether the batteries are close to the end of their life span, such as the voltage of the batteries, etc. I don't know the specifics, because I've never been interested enough to learn them. But there are several battery monitoring utilities available from http://macupdate.com and http://versiontracker.com that would help you monitor or track the voltage, level, and other properties of the batteries.

Either way, I'm putting my money on the outcome that you'll just need to bite the bullet and purchase a new battery.