Swollen mid2007 MB Battery....

(First: I did search the forums and didn't come across anything like this, so I'm opening a new thread.)

I've been plagued by weird cursor behavior for months now. At first I thought the problem was a dirty mouse button, which felt like something had accumulated under it. In an effort to clean the mouse button, I removed the battery, but then noticed immediately that the button clicked fine. The unintentional clickings and selections were due, I deduced, to the pressure a very slightly 'misaligned' battery was exerting on the button from beneath, everytime I so much as rested my hand lightly on the wrist area.

I thought that was normal, since it was a plastic case after all, and not everything had to fit perfectly fine, etc. I thought I was 'resting' my hand a little too 'heavily', perhaps.

Well today the button became completely blocked, and upon removing the battery again I saw that the pressure it exerted was due not to 'slight disalignment', but to a by now quite pronounced swelling right in the center of it! (model no: A1185)

I'm glad I was able to notice this before it got worse and possibly soiled the entire machine. I'm now running it directly on the power supply, so my questions:

i) Has any of you experienced something like this? What could be the cause?
ii) Is it dangerous/detrimental to run the MB directly on the power supply for extended periods?

I can't just ditch out $125 to get a new battery right now, and I'm quite annoyed by this. Again, I suppose I'm 'lucky' (?!) to have realized this before it exploded or leaked.

 

Stop using the battery immediately and I would call Apple and let them know what has happened. I'm assuming this is a Lithium-Ion battery. I would also keep the battery away from any source of heat and away from flammable objects.

I've never personally experienced something like this with a notebook battery but 9v batteries swell all the time.

Not dangerous or detrimental at all to run the machine without the battery in there. In fact if you plan on sitting at a desk for several hours using your laptop I would recommend you do so without the battery plugged in as to avert overcharging. It may be a pain in the but it will prolong your batteries life.

 

I would immediately dispose of the battery by taking it to a place that will dispose of it properly. No way I would keep that laying around in my house.

 

Do not continue to use the battery. Similar issues have been reported in the past (very recently on Engadget, in fact), with exploding batteries shortly afterwards in some cases. Keep it in a safe location for return to Apple if they so request it.

Contact Apple right away, this may be covered under some sort of warranty or whatever - nondefective batteries should not do this.

I actually run my laptop without battery most of the time - heat from the laptop is actually bad for the battery.

 

you could bring the laptop with its battery to the apple store and say it got swollen up. They should replace it as i read somewhere that it was a problem caused by the sony batteries which apple supplied in its macs. thousands, if not millions of these batteries were recalled. good luck.

 

Thanks a lot for all the answers.

Well I really don't think I can get a replacement, since I'm long out of warranty; but I'll call the Apple Store today if only to ask where I can dispose of this thing.

After a broken fan, and a harddrive just gone dead in a instant (one day before a transatlantic flight, in the middle of some serious work), this is the third time I'm having hardware problems with the MB--and I know that others have been through much worse. Apple betrays its legacy with such poor quality control.

 

keep it as far away as possible from your home.

there are a few reason for the swelling, two of which is contamination in the manufacturing process causing short circuit, and / or breakage / leakage in the cell's aluminum package within the battery. you will end up either having a slowly swelling battery, or worst, one that suddenly burst into flame ...

 

If the machine isnt under warranty, they wont replace the battery. I just sent back 4 of them at work (three from 17" MBP, and 1 from a 15" MBP) and they were replaced under warranty. Good luck with it, but I think you're going to be stuck with purchasing a new battery yourself.

 

That's honestly ridiculous in my opinion if they don't replace the battery even if its not under warranty. I could see if the battery was 10 years old or some insane number, but I'm assuming its only a few years old. Batteries are not supposed to do that, meaning that battery had a defect from day 1 when it was still under warranty, you didn't make the battery defect.