De Prez Allen Laudenslager found a solution for his battery problem. He relates, "My MacBook battery has been shutting down my computer in less than 15 minutes and is only 2 and a half years old. Should last longer. I also noticed that while the computer shuts down with a low battery message, when I check the manual battery level indicator on the battery it still shows a full charge

"I ran all the internal checks and tried everything on the Apple help pages. Then I found the directions to disconnect the power cord and let the computer run till it quit. Then leave it turned on for at least 5 hours. Yes, 5 hours after the battery died."

Allen continues, "Left it on over night after it quit and the next morning reconnected the power cord. After recharging, I have run for almost an hour and the battery shows slightly less than half charge which seems about right. The computer did not shut down and that's good enough for me.

"Try this if you are having short battery life in your laptop before you spend all that money for an new battery.

calibrating the battery
fully charge 2 hrs beyond green indicator on power cable
run on battery until machine shuts down or sleeps
leave computer off for 5 hrs or more
connect power adaptor, and leave connected until battery is fully charged.

resetting PRAM
(holding command + alt + P + R at boot time)

resetting SMC
remove external power
remove battery
hold down power button for 5+ seconds

Allen concludes, "From my Mac expert, the one that finally worked for me was the charge, run till shutdown and then recharge."