Apple prices MacBook Pro battery surgery
Apple has released details and prices of its battery-replacement program for the recently released 17-inch MacBook Pro. When the top-of-the-line Apple notebook was announced last Tuesday, eyebrows were raised when Macworld Expo keynote presenter Phil Schiller revealed that the battery of the 17-incher was, as he put it, " …
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Here's to 3rd parties
Come on, the battery sounds neat-o, the price is in the ok-range (Euroshafting as usual), one will have to see how it performs in real life.
In fact, taking away the possibility to replace it on the go gives 3rd parties a superb opportunity: Sell 17" Mac-heads external batteries that come with a Magsafe cable. This has a number of advantages:
- variable in size
- no need to match Apple's hardware in shape or color
- one model fits all Macbooks, not just the 17"
- can sell to other makes by just changing the cable
To the user it should not really matter as much whether they lug along a second battery or hook up an external one.
Re:@ jeremy by David Kelly
to answer your question no i don't mind changing my break pads they to me crashing and dieing i would be abit pissed in i had to change my fuel tank every 3 to5 years. which would be a better comparson.
in my experience of laptop batteries the claims never pan out. i mean it's not like they have been testing it for 8 years so can say that they have done it. ( i support a couple hundred laptop users at the moment so had a lot of batteries come back most needlessly)
for those who use windows and moan about battery life a good trick i have learned is as dodgey as it sounds to turn off all the powr management and let the battery run completely flat and recharge to max turn power management back on. for some reason it seems most powermanagement software loses the 100 percent level over time and it only gets reset when the laptop battery is on 0 then recharged i got about 45 mins back on this laptop HP 6320 that way but it's still down on it's 2and a half hours promised for it's life time (3yrs) it's about 2 at a year and a half
Anandtech OS X vs Vista battery life
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p=13
Laptop Batteries should be replaceable
I have a dell laptop and quite often go through 2-3 batteries before getting round to having to plug it in (i can charge two at a time using my docking station) this gives me pretty much a full day of power without having to plug in. If it cant do that what use is it!
@the above cage fighters
How would you feel about buying a car where the wheels are not interchangable and you have to goto an oficial dealer to get them changed
Funnily enough the Renault magane Has done this to a different degree, You are advised to take the car to an official dealer to change the lightbulb
At over £135 to change the lightbulb it is a complete ripoff, and In my opinion dangerous
In my 2CV if a bulb goes i Get out flip 1 catch pull the bulb out put a new one in, I dont even have to open the bonnet.
that a perfect analogy of the problem And at the end of the day all they are trying to do is make sure you but your batteries from them, Much the same way sony use a small program to give annoying popups when you buy a non sony battery.
There is no other reason apart from this.
Battery maintenance
Hows about those who pop their battery out when they go on mains power and thus preserve it for when they actually do need to go mobile? For that reason alone I wish they still made those batteries that didn't form part of the external casing of the laptop but rather sat behind a door...
Either way, that choice has now been removed from you, so even if you wished to make your nice new shiny toy last longer, you can't!
@Jared Earle Posted Wednesday 14th January 2009 09:47 GMT
I get what you say about not 'having' to get the 17" MBP, but what about those who have bought into the Apple OSX dream but like having spare batteries... say they work offsite a lot and will be needing a bright screen and lots of juice for big processing but when it comes to taking their machine off to a presentation room the battery is barely alive and suddenly that dead cert $5m deal you were about to win goes tats up? I'd be bummed at that point...
Just like cell phones, I like the contingency of having a backup for when I really need it!
3-5 years
After 3-5 years on a laptop i would probably be looking to replace the whole laptop. I have never replaced a battery in all of my electronic stuffs.
Might have to get a longer life battery for my Android phone though!
Paris as i bet she lasts a long time and won't need replacing in 3-5 years time!
What's the betting you get a different laptop back?
As I understand it the iPod battery replacement program usually results in you getting a different iPod back. What's the betting they do this with the MacBook Pro.
As for the folk saying it's no different to Dell/Sony etc; it's completely different. On every other machine I can just unclip my battery, and put a new one on. With the Apple I can't.
I can also see problems at airport security. Some places made you remove your battery before you pass the laptop through. I guess they'll be confiscating these then ;)
@BatteryMaintenance
"I get what you say about not 'having' to get the 17" MBP, but what about those who have bought into the Apple OSX dream but like having spare batteries..."
If there is a need for spare batteries, expect external third-party batteries to go on sale shortly. If they don't sell, then it was a non-issue.
Remember the outrage over the iMac not having a floppy drive? The market was flooded with translucent blue USB floppy drives no-one bought.
I for one am glad one company at least has the balls to try radical changes. Without them, we'd still have computers with floppy disks and parallel ports.
LiPO
These Lithium Polymers batteries cannot be man-handled as it would be too dangerous.
Search YOUTUBE for lipo battery to see what I mean. These are different to the Lithium Ion batteries we are used to, these new ones are like rocket fuel!
External Battery
I'm expecting there to be a number of third-parties who start making external batteries. Along the lines of those emergency batteries for mobiles.
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