How to Count the Charge Cycles on Your MacBook's Battery

 (from MacILife Newsletter)

I have a MacBook running Tiger, and my battery doesn't stay charged as long as it used to. I know Apple says batteries should retain up to 80 percent of their charge capacity for up to 300 full charge-and-deplete cycles, but I never bothered to count how many times I've charged the battery since buying this laptop. Is there a utility that can help me?

We recommend iStat Pro (free,www.islayer.com ), which is a Dashboard widget that keeps track of lots of data about your Mac's performance: CPU and memory usage, hard disk space, system temperatures, running processes, and of course, battery life and health, including the total number of charge cycles. The cycle count is also found in System Profiler (Applications/Utilities), under Power > Battery Information > Health Information > Cycle Count, but the iStat Pro widget can also tell you the relative health of your battery, as a percentage of its original capacity.