I bought my ibook G4 in December. It was a demo model at BestBuy. I'm only getting about 3.5 to 3.45 hrs of battery life. I know the machine itself is probobly close to a year old, but it would have been plugged in the whole time it was in the store... would this still effect my battery life even if it's running of the AC adapter?
3.5 hours is pretty good time for an iBook that's a year old. Just out of curosity, what were you expecting?
FYI-If you're hinting at a warranty replacement, it won't happen. iBooks/PowerBooks that are over a year old don't qualify for a battery replacement because of natural "wear and tear," even if they're protected under the AppleCare Protection Plan.
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i guess i was expecting to get at least 4hrs out of it... keep in mind that it might be a year old, but wouldn't have been used without the a/c adapter before i bought it in December. I wasn't thinking warranty actually... just wondering how long in general the battery lasts...
I bought a brand new 12"iBook in December, and the battery life really dynamically depends on the use of the iBook:
If I'm doing almost nothing that's cpu intensive, then I can have up to 4:30 hours (estimated) and as soon as I start using more of the CPU, I drop down to less than 3 hours... The remaining battery life time dynamically varies.
So based on what you're doing (which I don't know) I'd say that an average of 3.5 hours doesn't seems to be bad.
but it would have been plugged in the whole time it was in the store... would this still effect my battery life even if it's running of the AC adapter?
From my memory of Batteries 101, for the longest life, the batteries need to be "routinely" operated at their comfort level of 25-75% charge. So leaving it plugged into AC all the time is not good for a long battery life.
Exposing the battery to high or low temperatures can reduce the capacity also. As for your report of how long your battery lasts, I don't know what to make of it, since as people already said, it varies widely based on settings and what you do with it.
For my 3 year old 867MHz Powerbook, my measure is, if I can watch a complete DVD with speakers on full in a lighted room (screen brightness on medium-high), I'm happy. Or a full evening of casual web surfing.
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