Macbook Pro isn't charging anymore

DrIanMalcolm

Yeah so in the last week my Macbook Pro (which I got in Dec of 2007) stopped charging. It'll only turn on when it's plugged in (since it's at 0% battery life now) and I'm fairly certain that it's because of the battery. I swapped my battery with my bro's and it worked fine, and when I put my battery in his macbook it wouldn't charge.

So my question is, is there anything I can do to get it to charge or do I need to buy a new battery?

xzzy

Lithium Ion batteries lose about 20% capacity a year, so it seems like the battery is dead a little bit sooner than it should be, but usage patterns and environment can have an effect on this. Once they die, they're dead for good.

So, yes: go buy a battery.

Donkey Kong

You need to buy a new battery.

DrIanMalcolm

Well that was easy enough. I'll stop in at an Apple Center in the next few days

Thanks guys!

mts

i would see if they will replace it for free. i think its something like if the health drops below a certian threshold under 300 cycles or something like that.

i had a lemon battery on my macbook

Donkey Kong

After two whole years, it's pretty tough to say the wear on any battery is out of spec.

mts

probably but its worth a shot depending on his charging habits

GnomeTank

My wife and I were able to wrangle Apple in to replacing our dead battery under AppleCare, but it took some arm twisting. Their normal policy is to never replace batteries, ever. We also had to have a 400 dollar service addon to get it. Frankly, I recommend AppleCare anyway. I almost never buy any sort of extended warranty, but with as many issues as we had with her MacBook, it was completely worth it.

RBach

Apple's policy is most certainly not "never replace a battery". Obviously, Apple will replace any defective battery so long as it hasn't been misused/abused. I also can't fathom what "$400 service charge" they could have possibly levied to do it. It doesn't even cost that much to have the battery in a unibody Macbook replaced.

I'm also curious what issues you've run into and what Apple did to resolve them, but that's kind of off topic.

Arivia

RBach wrote: »

Apple's policy is most certainly not "never replace a battery". Obviously, Apple will replace any defective battery so long as it hasn't been misused/abused. I also can't fathom what "$400 service charge" they could have possibly levied to do it. It doesn't even cost that much to have the battery in a unibody Macbook replaced.

I'm also curious what issues you've run into and what Apple did to resolve them, but that's kind of off topic.

I believe he's talking about AppleCare as the $400 addon. The price for an MBP approached that at one point, at least.

Fun fact: AppleCare costs more on a $2500 MBP than it does on a $27,000 Mac Pro.

RBach

You're right, he probably does mean AppleCare. It's (currently) $349 for the MBP--$100 more than AppleCare on a Mac Pro. It shouldn't have affected his ability to get a defective battery replaced either way, though. Should being the operative word.