Posts Tagged ‘battery’
19 Oct
Well, my MacBook Pro is about 2 years old now and I’ve had… a total of 5 batteries exchanged so far. Of course, Apple has the famous Battery Exchange program that was… recently closed. Grrr.
I hope Apple was only screwing up with their batteries in the past and hopefully does a better job with the recently introduced new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks.
And if it’s not the battery or some fancy charging-related logic board problem, it must be me who is using the MBP so excessively that all batteries are dying nearly at light velocity.
Update: creativebits and TUAW have both mentioned articles on how to treat your laptop’s battery best. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I did with this battery (fully charge it, drain it, keep it at 50% charge when stored for a longer period of time, etc.). Didn’t help 
14 Sep
When purchasing my Canon Rebel XTI (a.k.a. “Canon EOS 400D” in Europe or “Canon EOS Kiss Digital X” in Asia), I also ordered the Canon battery grip BG-E3. When I was playing with the camera for the first time in a shop I found that (compared to the EOS 20D/30D/40D), the body of the XTi is too small for my hands. Not that I have huge paws, but it just felt too unhandy, especially using some of the heavier lenses, e.g., the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM.
So, when buying the BG-E3, I also got a better grip for the camera — it’s a great enhancement for the handling, not to mention the vertical shutter button and of course (the main reason for a battery grip) extended battery life when using two Canon NB-2LH batteries inside the grip instead of only one in the camera.
There is just one problem with that setup: Canon decided to design the battery grip in such a way that it drains bower from both batteries at a time while you’re shooting. On the one hand this means that you can take pictures for a longer period of time but on the other hands you’re still bummed when you run out of battery juice and have to dig through your backpack (you didn’t leave it at home or in the car, did you?) to load a fully charged battery.
My hack to resolve that problem is pretty simple — and I’m sure that I’m not the first one who came up with this idea. I used some masking tape to cover the contacts inside the battery compartment. Masking tape is easier to remove than regular sticky tape, so using it makes this hack easily reversible. On top of the masking tape I placed some regular nonconducting tape.
After you’re done you can load two batteries in the grip and only one of them is drained during shooting. When you run out of power just open the grip and simply switch both batteries. Continue shooting. Remember to charge the empty battery at the end of your shooting day. This small hack saved my life more than once during our vacation on the island of Sardegna/Italy this summer.
Another tip: when you’re using the battery grip but only have one battery loaded, place it in the middle slot (as seen on the previous picture), because the camera handling is more well-balanced then. Happy shooting!
31 Dec
It’s the small things that make OS X so outstanding… such as this dialog box which appears when you perform software updates on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) running from battery power. Nice 
29 Dec
Finally, I’m back with the road-warriors again. The last weeks, my MacBook Pro and I were bound to my desk because it was running without a battery. It had died (the computer just went out when the battery’s capacity reached about 30%), so I had to leave the battery at the Gravis store in Munich (as Apple does not [yet] have any official stores in Germany, Gravis IMHO is the best choice).
Since I bought my MacBook Pro in 9/2006 I’ve had 3 replacement batteries so far. This is the forth one. I hope it actually stays alive a little longer than a few months. And (just in case) I was able to buy another Apple battery on eBay for a quite affordable price, so I might now be able to (at least half-way) compete with a certain Thinkpad owner who coded during the whole flight from Germany to San Francisco…
20 May
The replacement battery I got from Apple almost 5 months ago didn’t live very long. During the last days I recognized that the battery capacity dropped dramatically from almost 5500mAh when it was new to about 300mAh after about 45 (complete) recharge cycles and run out of power when the battery meter in the menubar showed about 0:30 to 0:45 hours of left battery capacity.
If you want to find out how your battery is doing, click on the Blue Apple in the upper left corner of your Mac, then on “About this Mac” -> “More info”. You can check the battery details under “Hardware -> Power”.
So I again brought the MBP to the Apple Store (not that I’d been there a few days ago to have my broken Superdrive replaced) and informed them of the issue. I didn’t have to say much (using the keywords “MacBook Pro” and “battery” was enough information). I saw a bunch of replaced batteries behind the counter. As I suspect that the Genius Bar is (most likely) kind of cleaned every night, they must have replaced at least about 6 to 8 batteries only today–the customer who had the Apple Genius appointment just before me had the same problem with her MacBook.
Apple is aware of this kind of battery problem and has set up a corresponding battery replacement program. If you experience similar problems please see your local Apple dealer.
I must say I truly love Macs and I really don’t want anything else anymore. I think I’m also a “good” customer because I’m so overwhelmed by (and happy with) the Mac experience that I try to talk others into buying a Mac Worked so far with at least 3 buddies… and that seems to be an upward trend!
But I’m really afraid of the quality issues Apple seems to have right now. The third battery in 8 months and in addition the optical drive that needed to be replaced. They will have to address these problems. I’m lucky that the MBP is still under warranty and after all I’ve seen so far, I really consider buying an AppleCare Protection Plan–will sure be worth it (just in case) but that’s not so easily affordable for a student.
20 Dec
Vorgestern leistete der Akku noch treue Dienste und als ich das MBP gestern früh vom Strom abnabeln und zum Arbeiten in die Küche tragen wollte, war es auf einmal zappenduster. Das Gerät ging reproduzierbar unmittelbar nach Entfernen des Netzkabels aus und das, obwohl sowohl die Anzeige auf dem Akku als auch der Batteriestatus unter OS X einen 100-prozentigen Ladezustand anzeigten.
Gestern bin ich dann mit dem ganzen Gerät zu Gravis gedackelt und bekam nach einem anfänglichen Schock (“das könnte das Logic Board sein”) eine etwas mildere Nachricht zum Zustand meines Patienten (“Akku defekt”). Den Akku behielten sie sicherheitshalber gleich mal da und bestellten einen neuen, derweil läuft das MacBook Pro mit einem geliehenen Spenderherzen.
Der Akku tauchte übrigens nicht im Austauschprogramm für MacBook Pro-Batterien auf, wird aber dank Garantie dennoch ersetzt. Beim Akku-Modell handelt es sich um A1175, die Seriennummer endet auf TY4B. Vielleicht gibt es ja noch weitere Aussetzer bei anderen Usern.
20 May
Apple tauscht die Akkus von bestimmten iBooks und Powerbooks, die “weltweit von Oktober 2004 bis Mai 2005″ ausgeliefert wurden (natürlich kostenlos). Es kann sein, dass sich die Akkus dieser Geräte zu stark aufheizen und eine mögliche Brandgefahr darstellen können.
Ein kurzer Blick auf den Akku: meiner gehört zu der gefährdeten Sorte. Habe auf der Seite gleich einen Austauschakku bestellt und werde diesen hier zu Apple schicken, sobald der andere da ist.
Ist noch jemand betroffen? Es gab ja in meinem (Blogger-) Umfeld einige Leute, die sich in dieser Zeit portable Macs angeschafft haben…
