The latest laptop release form Apple, dubbed Macbook Air, is a great thinnovation. I was going to get one as my secondary laptop. But on second thought, I guess I am going to wait and see by how much has Apple’s hardware QA improved. 

This post is a cautionary tale for those who are contemplating about buying a macbook pro. I for one as a switcher fell for the Core Duo Macbook Pro for its design and  many features. But one thing bothers me more than anything – the battery does not deliver. And calibrating the battery just doesn’t help Symptoms include:

1. Quickly diminishing Full Charge Capacity (from  5500mAh to 1500mAh within 2 months)
2. Erratic reading of the battery level as shown in the menubar
3. Random shutdown at various battery level
4.  upon removing the magsafe cord, it would shutdown even the battery is charged to 40~50% 

The purchase date of my mac is 25th Sept, 2006. Within one short month, I saw erratic behavior – the battery level on the menubar indicates it drained from 100% to 70% within 10 minutes of use, all with minimal usage as witnessed by one of the Apple Staff in HK. Seeing is believing I guess, he double checked there was “not too much apps running in the background”, only safari with one tab, dashboard with 2 widgets, brightness tuned to lowest, wifi on. If he told me running these things are too much, that these are the cause of the erratic battery behavior, I would have believed him. But the funny thing is the system profiler says “Full Battery Capacity” is only 1500mAh, as opposed to 5500mAh for new laptops(mind you, it had only been used for 1 month or so). Then it was within another 5 minutes that the menubar says only 30% battery’s left. And all of a sudden the meter would say it has 60% left, then it would automatically go into sleep, without prior warning when it still has 50% battery. Well, it’s not that I am those geek who pay close attention to these numbers. The point is that the battery could only power my 1 month old laptop for 1 hour or so, with minimum usage as agreed by Apple’s Staff. A replacement battery was clearly necessary. So I went home with a new battery, which I thought was a small victory.

That was not the end of the story.  I have long suspected that deep discharge(discharging the battery from 100% to 20% or so), however rare, could harm the battery. I am aware that on paper, mbp battery is immune to memory effect. My paranoia remains and I tried to plug in whenever I could find one. It’s hard, believe me. After 1 year of careful use, the RSD is still evident. Though not as serious as before. Apple had released a fair share of battery updates to mbp users:Battery Update 1.3 (released 3rd October, 2007)Battery Update 1.2 (released 28th April, 2007)Battery Recall Programme?  No joy for me, as all my faulty batteries were not covered in the recall programme, yet Apple had offered to send replacements 2 times already. 

Off we go with the latest development. About using the battery for after a year or so, it started acting weird again. Same symptom as last time: it would shutdown when the battery meter says it still has 20% of power. Yet it has only been used for less than 75 minutes. A quick search at Apple’s Discussion Page indicates this symptom obviously takes time to manifest itself, ranging from at few as 2 months in my case to 1 year(see here and here), both core duo and core 2 duo mbp machines are affected. An email to Apple got me to one of their executive relations officer and a technician to provide support on the next working day. The technician, who was confident enough not to ask about the battery’s serial agreed that the battery is faulty and offered to send in a replacement. When asked if he had seen a lot of similar cases, he paused and answered, ” I can only say you are not the first.” Well said…A free replacement battery sounds like a great deal for mbp owners as it’s not warranted by Apple once you are outside of that 1 year Applecare, same for Applecare Protection Plan as well. As the executive relations officer said, “it’s a consumable parts”. It boils down to this, what would you think if you are the one having to live with a short-lived battery that requires replacing at a cost of HKD $950 every year (if you are lucky).  

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