Apple's "new" battery technology???

Apple.com ^ | 6/16/09 | Apple.com

[Blue Highway]

The new MacBook Pro family has a breakthrough battery that runs for up to 7 hours on a single charge (8 hours on the 17-inch MacBook Pro).1 And thanks to advanced chemistry and an innovative new charging method, it can be recharged up to 1000 times — nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries.2 All in a notebook that’s as thin and light as ever....

[Blue Highway]

If it lasts 5 years I will stand corrected and will bump this thread 5 years from now to say I was wrong. If I read reposts of this battery failing within 3 years I will call this a ploy or scam from their marketing department.

[ctdonath2]

Scam, malicious, same intent: painting Apple as deliberately nasty.

It’s not a scam, it’s a paradigm shift.

The battery on my current laptop rattles a bit from imperfect connectors, wastes inordinate materials & space on layer after layer of protection facilitating that removability which I don’t use. The round Li-ion cells add overall volume which squared cells don’t need. I replaced the battery only once, and that only because a fluke of a class-action lawsuit got me a new one free. At $400 for a replacement, I’d rather just put the money toward a new laptop. The size/weight/price cost of replacability just doesn’t warrant having it.

As for sending it off to the manufacturer, maybe I’m just lucky that there are 3 Apple stores nearby, and _if_ I needed a replacement I’d just drop it off in the morning and pick it up in the evening - faster than ordering a replacement battery for any other computer.

You’re obsessing over an issue that would happen about 5 years after purchase - IF the owner even keeps the device that long.

All that said, when the time comes we’ll be able to buy a third-party battery anyway, and a little care & elbow grease and we’ll be able to replace it ourselves anyway.

Your complaints just don’t warrant the level of vitriol. You don’t like Apple products? why the heck are you bothering to post here then - and so prolifically? just don’t buy one. The paradigm works for us; if something else works for you, you’re welcome to go spend your money on some other product.

[PA Engineer]

Hey check out this new thread by the the troll.

[ctdonath2]

GD vs. POS? wow, your juxtapositions of self-righteous superiority are very entertaining.

[ctdonath2]

Re point 1: no, what several on this thread are laughing at you about (yes, at, not with) is getting wildly bent out of shape about battery replacability yet admitting you haven’t replaced a dead battery on your own laptop. If you won’t swap out an easily-replaced battery yourself when warranted, don’t get bent into a pretzel when doing it on a MacBook takes a few hours while shopping.

[Blue Highway]

Like I said myself I am pissed myself that Compaq charges $130 for a freaking battery. THAT is unacceptable. You are trying to paint me as a troll but I am equally pissed that any company is charging THAT much for replacement batteries.

Once I buy a new Windows 7 laptop I will probably and only then try my hand at replacing the individual cells within the Li-Ion pack myself and the cost will probably be under $20.

[steve86]

Sounds like a balancing charger, As used in RC for quite some time, with the same batteries.

Even my $20 (total investment) micro-heli charger and battery pack meets all those requirements, including charging individual cells separately (balancing).

[coon2000]

Is there a company called Windows 7? I have never heard of them.

[John Valentine]

I hope you don’t represent most Mac users.

I don't represent anyone or any group. When I get bored with inanity and the superficial, it's just me.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Seems the lifetime of the battery is on a par with that of the hard disk, which on many laptops is not officially a user-serviceable part. (And which, ahem, is typically warranted for a year at most.) But plenty of users replace their non-user-serviceable hard disks when they eventually fail, so I expect many Apple laptop users will do the same with their battery.

The thing is: we’ve had two trusty Powerbooks overhauled completely by Apple recently for a flat fee of $318 each. That included batteries, hard disks, and in the case of one unit, a display, among other things, and the units were returned fully refreshed, down to new little rubber feet on the bottom. $318 to make a five-year-old product like-new is far from unreasonable. So, even though many folks will replace their non-user-replaceable batteries themselves, the alternative that has you so worked up is far from the end of the world.

[Blue Highway]

I’ve never voided my warranty on my Compaq notebook through either Compaq or Microsoft for having had 4 different hard drives in my laptop over the past 2 years as well as 6 or 7 different iterations of XP, Vista, and Win 7 or Linux versions. I don’t buy the idea the hard drive is a non user serviceable part. Heck Microsoft has an 800# specifically for when you upgrade a major component like a hard drive and need to re-register your Microsoft product. On the part of Compaq I had to low level format my original 80 gig Seagate hard drive when I returned it to Compaq. I don’t trust anyone having my data at all.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

" Despite popular belief all you Apple users aren't immune to hackers or malware attacks."

Blue, I really don't have a dog in the fight, since RightOnTheLeftCoast Manor has PCs running everything from WinME to Win7, several Linux machines, several Macs, and a Sun Sparcstation. So all I have to work from is experience:

My two teenage sons had Windows laptops for several years. And I was resigned to wiping those machines to bare metal every few months due to contagions they'd pick up which would bring their machines to their knees despite costly antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, disk-cleaning, disk defrag, registry cleaning and similar utilities. No strategy I was able to implement would keep those machines uninfected.

So in disgust I got 'em both Mac laptops. And going on twelve teenager-years of use now, there hasn't been a single support incident. Not one.

Being an everyday XP user, I'm the first to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with using Windows. Insecure, maybe, but if you avoid gaming and music sites and (the scourge of my wife's Windows laptop) cute "free" animated cursor downloads, you'll be fine. But neither does a Windows machine compare with a Mac in real-world security, robustness, reliability or usability. Today's Macs are marvelous accomplishments. And though I'd expect to pay significantly more for a best-in-class product, they're quite reasonable when ranked against machines of comparable capabilities.

[Blue Highway]

I guess $318 to refurbish your 5 year old Powerbook, but I see it as $318 can pay for 90% of my next PC laptop with the first released version of Windows 7.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"I don’t buy the idea the hard drive is a non user serviceable part."

Either do I, but tell that to the anti-tamper stickers on the screws of my old Compaq.

Had I gone into that machine to fix a "non-user-serviceable part" like the hard disk, I'd have voided its warranty. Not the case with Macs, unless of course you do damage while you're in there. If you replace the hard disk, Apple will no longer warrant the hard disk but the motherboard, display and other bits will still be covered unless you screw 'em up somehow. At least, this goes for my experience with the extended 3-year AppleCare warranty, which I highly, highly recommend.

I haven't mentioned the great service you get in the Apple Stores yet on this thread. I've owned Dell, Sony, IBM/Lenovo and Compaq, and I'm here to tell you that it's a real joy to make an appointment online, saunter into the store at the appointed hour, and talk with a knowledgeable technician who really knows his or her stuff and speaks actual unaccented English. Compare that with the many hellish hours on the phone with Mujibar in Bombay mulishly reading a totally irrelevant script to me as my blood pressure spikes into the stratosphere... no comparison.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

" Like I said myself I am pissed myself that Compaq charges $130 for a freaking battery. THAT is unacceptable."

Yeah. I replaced the battery on one of the family's Powerbooks for half that. You're being ripped!

[heh.]

Actually, $130 isn't too out of line. Compaq charges that because people pay it. Go third-party, then. I'd recommend against rebuilding the pack yourself. Today's batteries are touchy and more than a bit dangerous.

[Blue Highway]

It is well known there are less attacks directed towards Macs because of the limited amount of marketshare of users.

That said, I never have a problem unless I were to be frequenting questionable website, which I stay away from.

[Blue Highway]

Do you mean taking the hard drive itself apart? I wasn’t doing that as I just mean removing the hard drive from the laptop and upgrading to a larger drive.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"It is well known there are less attacks directed towards Macs because of the limited amount of marketshare of users."

It's also well-known that Windows is a patched and repatched single-user system that was never designed to be secure in a networked environment, especially as compared to *nix-based systems like OS X which implement userspace protections from the ground up.

Windows represents a lot of low-hanging fruit for attackers. But you are correct in that the wetware sitting at the keyboard is the most important contributor to computer security. Having said that, my sons' usage of game sites and music sites and P2P stuff (despite my vociferous disapproval!) has resulted in zero infections on their Macs vs. near-fatal infections every few weeks on their PCs, despite all precautions. The Mac (and Linux) is safer, and you might as well just get over it.

And the difference has at least as much to do with architecture as with market share. There are lots of other issues that Windows machines suffer that Macs don't, too, such as disk fragmentation and registry corruption. Unfortunately, I'm finding that Windows 7 isn't immune to those evergreen issues either.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Do you mean taking the hard drive itself apart? I wasn’t doing that as I just mean removing the hard drive from the laptop and upgrading to a larger drive."

That (not disassembling the drive) is what I was referring to.

Having said that, if you ever have a drive that is really and truly borked, with no hope of resurrection or replacement under warranty, then go ahead and open it up. They're exquisite little mechanisms, like jewelry. They amaze me, not least that they can be manufactured for a profit, considering what they do. And the stators for the head-arms make great refrigerator magnets!

[tubebender]

Your Chris Matthew’s impersonation is unbecoming of you. The spittle on your screen can be cleaned up with gasoline on a steel wool Pad