iBook battery

[Greg Hamilton]

I think I may have mentioned this here before, anyway...

I've been watching the charge on my new-ish replacement iBook battery. 
I've noticed the charge reaches 100% and then slowly drops even though 
I'm still running on mains power. When it drops below 90-95% it starts 
to charge again. This means the battery is constantly cycling rather 
than remaining charged until I actually use it. Maybe this is normal 
but it seems a little weird to me.

Does anybody else see this behaviour? It seems like a really good way 
to wear out a Li-Ion battery in a hurry to me.

I've also been watching the power cable light on a new iBook G4 being 
used by somebody else in the office. The light cycles b/w green and 
orange (charged and charging) about once every five minutes. This 
suggests the same behaviour but it's cycling a little faster than I see 
under Linux. The machine has not had the recent Apple battery firmware 
update applied yet. I wonder if that will make a difference.

This, incidentally, is why I've been posting questions regarding 
installing Panther alongside YDL on my iBook. I currently have no way 
to apply the update to my iBook as it requires OS X.

Greg