• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

short thread re ibook g4 battery condition

chelseayr

Well-known member
considering that the two 1.33ghz models were discounted sales-wise in 2005 or 2006, I had never ever thought to check that specific part of the system profiler last year and only finally did look at it this month while testing around the ibook itself for a bit and..

it turns out theres only 252 cycles on the battery and I know I've only used it one/few times some weeks last year and maybe a few times earlier this year (notwithstanding 2 times this month) which puts me at easily under 200 cycles personally.. so considering how far apart 2006 and 2023 are years-wise I wonder if I'm wrong to strongly suspect that the prior owner had gotten a fresh new battery for it 'relatively shortly' before it ended up on kijiji instead aka soon it ended up into my hands?
[as my working theory is: if it was really the original battery then what was it doing with like only 12 cycles per year, notwithstanding that I don't know if a 18 years old battery could had still willingly ran lightly for more than 2 hours before the "please plug in soon!" warning dialog popped up and I've actually ran into that dialog several many times so I know the battery it has really can push 2 hours at times no question]

thanks for any second opinion on this :)
 

dan.dem

Well-known member
In 2018 I got a similar 1.33 GHz PowerBook from a friend, also with a fully working original battery. I cannot remember the number of power cycles it had had, but it was roughly the number you mentioned. He was a DJ and used it mostly while plugged to the mains both at home and on stage.
What is the key point for battery longevity is cooling, and his setup was perfect for this. He had the PowerBook on a hinged adjustable arm that allowed good heat dissipation also on the laptop's underside. In contrast, I ruined my iPhones battery in less than a year when I put my (multiple times folded) vaccination certificate between its underside and a protective shell. I literally cooked the battery down while navigating and using the internet during my summer vacation in hot southern Italy.
The downside of his adjustable arm was that the PowerBook was in danger to fall off of it, which happened later to its successor an Intel MacBook.
 
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