2 February 2009 - 9:41 pm

Technical issues

My laptop appears to be creaking at the seams. The battery is not doing very well and I suspect it needs to be replaced. It likes to switch off the laptop when it gets within sniffing distance of 50% of juice left.

And the keychain just got corrupted, which means that I lost all my passwords for everything. Argh. It has taken me half an hour to fix the damn thing and dig up all my passwords.

My poor little iBook is about 5 years old now, so I can’t really blame it. It’s been a good machine until now. Of course, it picks the month that I’m really strapped for cash and can’t afford to buy a new battery. It picks the time that I’m wound up in writing every day in a place where I can’t plug it in (namely, on a train).

Oh well. The corruption is fixed and I will just have to cope with the battery issues until I can get a new one. Wish me luck!

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4 comments

  1. Ann Somerville says:

    Have a look at this

    http://forums.mactalk.com.au/29/17222-ibook-battery-wont-charge-past-50-a.html

    Also, there is a widget for the dashboard called istat pro which will tell you if the battery really does need replacing.

    this might be relevant too
    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25013/battery-drain

    February 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 am

  2. Mel says:

    Ooo, thank you! I will check those out.

    It is now switching off when it gets close to 60% of the battery left. I can barely make it to work before it gives up on me. 🙁

    February 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm

  3. Gabriel says:

    Really sorry to hear about your laptop hassles. There’s nothing worse than your tools of the trade breaking down on you or being unreliable. Still, pretty impressive that you got 5 years of use out of that battery.

    February 4th, 2009 at 12:11 am

  4. Mel says:

    Yeah! It’s been a good machine, all told. This is the first time I’ve ever had an issue with it! It’s just chosen the absolutely wrong time to break down.

    The little widget that Ann kindly recommended says that the battery has 42% health – I’m thinking that’s a bad sign. 😉 I might see if I can do a bit of reconditioning on the weekend, pump some life into the old thing. Wish me luck! 🙂

    February 4th, 2009 at 6:42 pm