Powerbook 12" draining battery in sleep

B

bunner bob

Registered
My wife's Powerbook is draining its battery when it's asleep (and awake, but that's normal). The other day she put it to sleep with 95% power available, and when she returned about 4 hours later it was down to 5% - while asleep!

What's going on? How do we fix it?

She did recently update her system to 10.3.5, if that makes any difference.

Thanks,
Bob
 
Have you recieved the Battery reserve message? That should appear at 8% battery life.

The thing is, the battery meter could of dropped, but the actual battery life could be much higher, like 90%. It happened to my friends iBook. Just see how long it lasts after you wake it up.
 
There could be something wrong with the battery. How long does the battery last when you're using the laptop like normal? It could be that your battery is almost dead.

You might want to see what the capacity of you battery is. Open up Terminal and type in the following command.
Code: 
ioreg -l | grep Battery

You might need to resize the Terminal to see the entire output. Post back the numbers you see.
 
Battery reserve message appears normally, so meter seems ok.

Battery life seems possibly shorter than it used to. Will the terminal script show the capacity of the battery as designed, or as it currently is (i.e. if the capacity has dropped will I be able to tell from the script)?
 
The terminal command will show the current battery capacity. Which is why I asked you to run it and see.
 
You may also want to restart the maching in Single User mode, and let the battery drain till it dies. This will sort of "reset" the battery, and once fully charged, may improve capacity.
 
Viro - the battery capacity is 3540, amperage 1230 (when about 54% charged and running on battery). Also it says "Curren$", whatever that means.

How do those numbers stack up?

- Bob

PS - It seems to be behaving somewhat better lately, for whatever reason.
 
capacity 3540 is quite good. A brand new battery would have something like 4400, but anything above 4000 is generally good. In order to see the current level, you need to resize the terminal window. It says "Curren$" because there isn't enough space to display it. So just resize the terminal window and it will show you the current charge. So if the capacity is 4000 and the charge is 50%, Current should read 2000.

Your battery's capacity looks fine though. It might have to do with the current charge. Have a look at it.
 
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