MacBook shuts down after low battery warning

Hi,
up until recently my macbook's battery has been working just fine. but then lately i noticed that a few minutes after it displays the low battery warning it shuts down by itself.
before, when the low battery warning would display i could still continue working on my macbook for several minutes until it goes to sleep -- only then would i connect it to the power cord.
unlike the other posts (concerning batteries) that i've read, i have no problems turning my macbook on/off before or after this event has occured. neither does it shut itself down when the battery is halfway. my problem really only happens after the low battery warning has been displayed.
i wanted to calibrate my battery but then that would require my macbook to go to sleep once it reaches a battery level of less than 5%-10% -- mine just shuts down completely.
is this shutting down thing a substitution mechanism to save the laptop's memory -- instead of going to sleep, it'd just shut down?? how can i fix this?
thanks in advance for the help.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8) 512MB, 2GHz Intel Core Duo

For what it is worth, I now have the same issue. Only I don't even see the low battery warning, it gets to 15% or 10% and bang, no power. This is not good, by the way and is bound to corrupt something in the system as OSX requires some house keeping when you shut down the computer properly. This instant off is not a proper shut down. I took my MacBook in and they wouldnt simply replace the battery, they want to keep the computer and give it back to me in a few days. I rely on this puter for work 5 days a week, so I was trying to avoid this.
Oh well I guess a trip to the Apple store is unavoidable.
Regards,
RacerX

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