Laptop does not recharge its battery
Different generations of Apple portables use different battery technologies. Some of them are "intelligent," in that they internally keep track of their charge status and average recharge times.
Apple Support Knowledgebase has information on techniques used to maintain each model of battery. You should consult that to find your portable model and information on its battery.
Apple has various utilities that can reset the embedded memory on its "intelligent" batteries. These can be found in the Apple Software Downloads of Apple's Web site.
If there is no battery reset utility for your model, you may want to try resetting the Power Manager. This can often make the portable realize that it needs to start recharging its own battery.
If you have an external battery charger from a third-party vendor, you may want to attempt to charge the battery in that device. If it does charge there, but does not charge in the PowerBook or iBook, there is likely to be a problem with the portable computer itself -- not the battery. Unfortunately, ITS does not have external battery chargers available to test batteries.
If these steps fail, you will probably need to replace the battery with a fresh one. It is our experience that Apple is unlikely to replace a battery under warranty. We begin seeing some batteries that degrade after the first year and may need replacement that quickly after the initial purchase of the computer. You can purchase new batteries from the Apple Store for Education.
