'Check Battery' at 73 cycles. Any warranty?

My Macbook battery seems to have gone kaput and my Macbook will only work if I have my power adapter plugged in. It seems like my battery is at fault, since most of the threads I've read here say that if it does say 'check battery', that means it's dead and can't be fixed.
So my question is, does Apple cover this or do I have to buy a new battery? I bought my Macbook about 2 years ago pretty much new from someone who never opened theirs. Not sure what kind of warranty is on this though.

Hi Stikygum,
There's no right or wrong cycle count after a specific period of time. Apple's expectation is that at 300 cycles the battery should still be 80% of it's original full charge capacity. My understand (and this is rough estimation) is this is how Apple gets to that number:
300 cycles over 3 years (300/3) = 100 cycles per year
100 cycles per year over 12 months (100/12) = 8.333 cycles per month
~ 2 cycles per week
Again this is average, some users might be significantly greater than this (1 per day) or significantly less than this (1 per month). The important thing is that at least once a month you're cycling the battery. Some rough math would indicate you were putting a cycle on the battery about once every 7 to 11 days (give or take).
Apple's warranty (one-year) and AppleCare (three-year) only cover the battery if it's defective. But as you're past the one year and don't have AppleCare, regardless of whether or not the battery is defective (or depleted) you're outside of coverage. That's what I meant say.
It's very possible that you've got a defective battery but unfortunately without AppleCare (something that Apple offers you a 365 day window to purchase after you get the machine), you're not eligible for a free replacement.

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