What does "Replace Now" mean on my MacBook battery menu?

This is an easy one: any time that the computer complains about your battery, you have a problem if you need to ever work without a plug. Worse, if you are ever running with the computer plugged in and there's a power glitch or someone accidentally unplugs it, if you don't have a functional battery it'll instantly kill your MacBook and you'll lose everything you've been working on, any open files, etc. Not so good.

In fact, with a bad battery, your laptop basically becomes a small desktop machine with a premium pricetag for its ostensible portability. Not so good. Oh, and with a completely dead battery you probably can't even keep it in sleep mode while you're moving from one spot to another either, having to constantly shut down and restart it.

As you surmise, the solution is to replace the battery with one that hasn't been charged to its end life. The bummer is that, well, yeah, it's going to be kind of expensive. In fact, I just replaced the battery in an Apple iBook and it was $119 + tax through the Apple Store. Yours might be even more expensive.

Then again, with a typical life of 500+ charges, it should last you at least a few years, and at $1/day, it's a simple and smart investment that definitely makes your computer function better and makes your work safer.

Let's back up a bit, though. Normally when you check your battery status, you'll probably see something like this:

But what you're seeing is probably something more [depressing] like this:

In typical Apple way, if you click on it you'll be shown a useful page that lists the options of a normal battery (nothing is shown), "replace soon", "replace now" (what you see above) and "service battery":

You can easily search for batteries on the Apple Online Store, but I'd also encourage you to check Amazon.com and even do a Google search for "replacement battery" coupled with your specific MacBook model. Beware, though, some of the very inexpensive batteries might be slightly different sizes and/or have incorrect electrical characteristics. A small savings now won't benefit you if it dies in two months, won't fit properly in your computer or can't properly charge...

I'd definitely recommend you upgrade to a new, fully functional battery. Good luck!

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