It’s getting annoying. I guess it’s time to end this relationship once and for all. I thought all was well between us. Apparently not.

Today was typical. When I unplugged, I thought I had about 2 hours and 30 minutes of battery life according to the menu bar.

40 minutes later, give or take, seconds after I glanced at the indicator and saw what I thought was over an hour of charge left, the screen went black and the keyboard was unresponsive.

When I plugged it back in, the computer came right back to life and the battery indicator showed 0% charge.

Reading some older threads around the ‘net, it may be time for a call to Apple. After only 43 cycles on a year-old machine, this shouldn’t be happening.

Update: After watching the battery indicator go from 100% to 70% to black screen in under 30 minutes, I called Apple. Let’s hear it for AppleCare. Even though my battery’s serial number doesn’t qualify it for an automatic exchange, she had me read off the data from the Power section of System Profiler and agreed that my battery is most definitely a doorstop long before its time. Ya think?

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1473

Remaining Capacity (mAh): 615

Amperage (mA): 1012

Voltage (mV): 12499

Cycle Count: 44

She confirmed that I had appropriately applied the recent software update designed to help poor, sick batteries and just like that, a new battery is on its way to me. That’s $129 I’m very happy not to be spending now.