Is there a lemon law for MacBooks?

Long time readers of my blog may recall that my very first generation MacBook experienced every major problem being exhibited by MacBooks. Weird screen problems, sudden power offs, etc.

Now, I’ve got a new one… my MacBook has never had as good battery life as my iBook did, but, I figured it was to be expected as it was smaller, had to drive fans and has a dual-core Intel processor. (Intel never having been known for power-efficiency.)

With those strikes going against it, I didn’t expect that kind of battery life. Still, I never got anything particularly good. 2 hours of operation if I was lucky.

In the last few weeks, that number has plummeted to about 1 hour, and the battery gauge doesn’t accurately reflect the run time. I did all the steps to re-calibrate the battery to no avail.

For a couple weeks, it behaved normally, but with limited battery life. In the last week it has adopted a new symptom. It runs out without warning, and even the battery indicator on the battery itself appears to be wrong.

On our way back from Prescott, since I was the passenger, I decided to give it a complete, documented test.

Conditions:

• Battery fully charged
• Airport turned off
• Bluetooth turned off
• No programs started automatically
• Energy settings set to: Better Energy Savings
• Running one program only, Solitaire XL, continuous use

Here’s how it worked:

• Booted at 12:40, battery estimate 2:10, battery lights 5 LEDs
• 13:44, system shutoff without warning. Battery estimate was about 1:50 remaining within 3 minutes of shutoff! Battery lights, 3 LEDs.
• Booted at 13:45. Battery estimate 1:20, battery lights 3 LEDs
• 13:48, system shutoff with no warning. Battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:50, Power Up, Estimate 1:54, battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:53, powered off, battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:54, power up
• 13:54, powered down before boot completed, battery lights now read 1 LED.

I was actually surprised by how many times I could restart in. In the past (but with much less stringent observation) I had estimated that it was dropping off after approximately one hour. I would check the lights and have 3 LEDs. I would try to start the computer again and it would fail during startup. At this point, it would only show 1 LED.

The question is, is the battery wonky, or is the computer’s energy management system busted. Either way, it’s time again for AppleCare.

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