Ok this has happened twice now, and just wondering if it's normal. I tend to use my iBook at work, and am lazy and don't plug it in, so I get home and have maybe %40 charge left, play around a bit, don't plug it in yet. So I am sitting at say %35 charge, plug in my iPod, and boom in under a min I have no power left in the iBook battery. Is this normal? Both times this has happened I have moved an album or two from the iBook to the iPod, and iSync kicks in automatically as well.

LiIon batteries tend to be difficult batteries on which to accurately monitor charges because they don't discharge at a steady rate - they discharge relatively steadily for some time, but at a point below about 50%, they tend to drop very fast in a short period of time.

p

So basically the iBook battery is lower than is being reported, and then when I add the iPod and it does the data transfer it eats what's left up? I'm assuming FireWire transfer is fairly power intense to begin with?

That would be it, yes.

FireWire transfer itself isn't inherently power-hungry, but whenever an iPod is connected to a device that provides FireWire bus power (which the iBook does), it tries to draw power from the bus in order to recharge itself, so that sucks the battery down even faster.

p