Everything was fine with my MacBook last night. The battery ran low but I did not plug it in before I went to sleep for the night.

But now, when I wake up, something is different. When I plug in the MacBook, the light goes green when it would normally be amber (charging). Also, the battery indicator shows an ‘X’ in the battery indicator - and says “No Batteries Available”.

So basically the laptop works but it only works when plugged in directly.

I’ve found a bunch of threads on the subject.

I installed the MacBook battery update this morning but it has not fixed the problem.

I am about an hour away from a mall with a Genius Bar so I will try to get to one this week sometime.

It has been about 18 months since we first switched to Mac. We started our switch by purchasing one iMac G5. Today, we own 4 Mac computers: two iMacs, an iBook, and a MacBook.

Yes, there have been some bumps in the road, but overall we enjoy it and have become die hard Mac users. We use our Macs for everything and my wife and I both agree that switching to Mac has made us more productive and made our work more enjoyable at the same time.

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I mentioned a while back that we have an issue with our iBook G4 - that the white color has faded on commonly touched areas and now is a yellowish color.

I just discovered a new site (courtesy of ZDNet) about stains and discoloration that are occurring on new Apple MacBook laptops. The stains that they report are very similar to the ones we have on our iBook. I have not yet sent in the machine for repair..

If you happen to use Google Calendar, you will be pleased to know that a Google Calendar client for the Mac is now available and free/open source. You can get it here.

We’ve been thinking about buying a second Mac laptop. I’m not sure what we’ll get yet, but I really like the size of our 12″ iBook and it is powerful enough for both of us to do everything we need.

I thought about buying a new MacBook Pro because it would let me dual-boot into Windows for a handful of apps. Now I’m not sure: Jason Calacanis referred to the new MacBook Pro as “a Ferrari that stalls half the time.” In his words, the wifi sucks on his brand new, $3,000 MacBook Pro.

That problem could be a dealbreaker for me, as I would use the laptop exclusively via wireless internet. So far it looks like we’ll either buy an older iBook G4, or just wait entirely.