Yet another (different?) battery issue

Question

I have two batteries for my Powerbook, one I keep as a spare and which has only been used about half a dozen times.
Over recent months I have noticed that the original battery (and the unused one) seemed to take an increasingly long amount of time to recharge, but in the past few days it won't seem to recharge at all. The percentage of remaining charge on both batteries will only go down, with one currently at 25% and the other at 37% and no matter which battery I have installed, whenever I click on the battery menu, in the first line it says "10:00 until full"
I've tried all the suggestions that I've seen in responses to other battery issues, including resetting the PRAM both with the four key shortcut and using open firmware and reset-nvram and reset-all. I've also tried resetting the PMU by holding down the power key, until the long bleep and I've just tried the Powerbook G4 Battery Updater, but with both batteries I get the following message "Your battery was not updated. Make sure you have a battery properly installed and then try to update your battery again. Be sure to complete the update process for this battery before starting the update of another battery"
The information in the system profiler for each battery is as follows:
Original battery -
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 861
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3508
Health Information:
Cycle count: 110
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 10
Voltage (mV): 11320
Relatively new battery -
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1621
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4381
Health Information:
Cycle count: 3
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 10
Voltage (mV): 11331
I notice there is a massive difference in the "Cycle Count" for the two batteries (110 and 3) although I haven't got a clue what this means.
Any advice or suggestions would be most welcome, as at present I am worried that eventually I will have run both batteries down and there will be no point in me purchasing a new one if my laptop cannot charge it for some reason.
As ever my utmost thanks in advance to anyone who takes the trouble to get back to me
Kind Regards
Bernard
PS. the charger info in System Profiler is as follows
AC Charger Information:
AC Charger (Watts): 50
Connected: Yes
Charging: Yes
Message was edited by: tdogb

Answer 1

Thanks a million for getting back to me Louie
The ring on the power socket is orange, suggesting that it is charging. However I didn't noticed the 50watts in my System Profiler details for the AC Charger. My Power Supply says that it is a 65w one with the correct model no. for this Powerbook (I think it says A1021 on it but I don't trust my eyesight at this time of night)
Both batteries do appear to be charging but incredibly slowly. For example I have been trying to charge up the battery all week and I had it up to 33% at one stage, before I neglected to plug the power chord in when I turned it on and it slipped back down to 22%. Three days later with it plugged into the power constantly (with me using the computer only during the day and putting it to sleep at night - should it charge when in sleep mode?), it's only crept back up to 30% again.
This battery could be knackered but I hardly have used my spare battery and even that won't seem to charge any quicker
I am also pretty certain that this incredibly slow charging is a recent problem, as I've had that power supply for some time (a year maybe) and I am sure that in the past the batteries have charged up at a more normal rate.
My power supply socket got a little knock recently when I tripped over the cable (as seems to be a common problem on the old non-magnetic sockets) and since then, with the connection not being nearly so snug, it happens quite frequently that I wake the computer from sleep and only realise that the plug is slightly out of the socket when the warning comes up that the laptop will put itself to sleep because the battery is low.
As a result, where previously I was always using the power supply with the battery fully charged and the light on the ring usually green, these days it seems to be permanently orange because I keep running the battery down and in recent weeks it will not seem to charge up because it takes so much time
I am guessing that I must've bought a moody power supply (I guess cheap is cheap, as they say) but I don't think it's the source of my problem because the issue has only manifested itself recently
Many thanks as always for taking the trouble to get back to me
Best Regards
Bernard