Studying the Slow Decay of a Laptop Battery For an Entire Year 363
First time accepted submitter jradavenport writes "I've been keeping a log of the health of my MacBook Air battery for the past year, taking samples every minute I use the computer (152,411 readings so far!). This has allowed me to study both my own computing/work habits, but also the fascinating rapid decay of battery capacity. Comparing it to my previous 2009 MacBook Pro, the battery in this 2012 Air is degrading much faster."
Ah, I see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
You're discharging it wrong, don't do that.
Here's the real problem (Score:2, Funny)
He finds the failure of a product he paid good money for fascinating, rather than infuriating.
Re: Here's the real problem (Score:3)
It's not necessarily a failure at all, just different. A 2009 MacBook (especially with the removable battery) used older technology, but did not store nearly as much energy per cm^3.
A 2012 Air uses a much more compact battery, that holds more power, and gets hit a lot harder by newer processor features. (Cause a new processor uses more juice when running, but then sleeps more often) The overall curve of usage isn't going to be the same with all those tech changes.
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A Pentium 4 pulled about 70-90 amps peak. No way that came directly from the powersupply. There was a large array of capacitors on each motherboard to buffer for those power draws. Inside the socket was an open space. Usually there were a few high speed capacitors there to buffer for the fast pulses.
Newer processors will have a similar p
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One would had got a Dell machine with less retarded spec and possibility of ordering a higher resolution screen for almost 40% less to.
Apple fanboys gonna hate.
We've all got our anecdotes. From 2004-2008 I went through two higher-end Inspirons. The first one just completely fell apart, the second literally blew up in my lap (smoke and all--I think capacitors popped). It was outside of warranty, and someone talked me into buying an early 2008 MacBook Pro. Worked like a champ for 5 years. I gave it to my niece when I upgraded earlier this year.
IIRC, battery life sucked pretty badly on most laptops back then. My MBP didn't get significantly better or worse batt
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Nothing at first.
They are typically warranted for 10-15 years.
Most people will not own them that long.
Re: Here's the real problem (Score:3)
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$2500 is about what they are, not exactly boatloads.
Most 10-15 year old ICE cars will require extensive maintenance. Go look what a Gen1 Insight with a manual is going for. They seem to retain their value pretty well.
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The way they're designed or rather how long they're designed to last assumes some very specific conditions. The biggest problem is that people thrash their cars and dont even realize they're doing it because they assume that a $20k thing should be made to endure a war zone, which they certainly are not. The way I see some people drive makes me think they hate their car, but they probably just don't realize that full acceleration all the time, not slowing for bumps, heavy braking, etc are the biggest keys to
Re: Here's the real problem (Score:4, Informative)
For example if a wheel is making noise have it checked either by a shop or your self if you know what to look for and make the noise go away:
It might be the pad wear indicator just starting to scrape (replace the brake pads and enjoy your new found stopping power) It might be that you have run the pad backing into the rotor in which case you avoided a very bad problem but you might need you hearing checked since it got this far
The bearing might just be a little dry in which case greasing it solves the problem
If the bearing is completely dry you just avoided a very bad problem
If the needle bearings are gone you just avoid a very bad problem but why did you wait so long as it should have been making nose for a while so go get your hearing checked
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If you live in a place that doesn't get extreme heat, car batteries can last a long time. They have their shortest working lives in really hot places like Nevada or Arizona or the Australian outback, and tend to work longest in places that don't get very warm. Here where I live, in Saskatchewan, we're in the middle - but it's not our very cold winters that are the problem (they expose bad batteries but surprisingly aren't that hard on a battery's chemistry), it's the hot brief summers that drag our batter
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Take one guess where I got this from "However, the AppleCare Protection Plan for notebook computers does not cover batteries that have failed or are exhibiting diminished capacity except when the failure or diminished capacity is the result of a manufacturing defect.". So Apple analyses consumer complaints over previous product cycles and seeing a chance for profit reduces quality of batteries base upon how often complain and push publicly for failed battery replacement. Will batteries be replaced, NO, bec
Re:Ah, I see the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
You have to do that every once in awhile if you want the battery status indicator to be correct. This is because the voltage curve is so flat there really is no other way to determine level of charge other than to count power out and calibrate what the battery should hold periodically.
Re:Ah, I see the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't care if the battery gauge is inaccurate, you should never cycle the battery completely. Lithiums thrive with frequent top-ups.
Unfortunately, having a useful gauge is handy so it's useful to cycle the battery occasionally.
I rarely use battery power deep into a battery's cycle so I don't worry too much about it.
Survey says... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Survey says... (Score:5, Informative)
We live with what we got now. That is life. But ...
Within a few years that will change with lithium-sulfur batteries if the lab geeks have anything to say about it.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/157525-new-sulfur-based-battery-is-safer-cheaper-more-powerful-than-lithium-ion [extremetech.com]
Re:Survey says... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea. a change in methodology between test invalidates the results of an experiment. It could very well be that running the battery test every minute is causing his battery to deteriorate.
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Would that be irony of just funny?
Re:Survey says... (Score:5, Funny)
No no. It's more lithiumy.
Re:Survey says... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no such thing as a battery test. Had you referred to the fine code, you'd have noticed that the logger merely trivially logs the data already available and exposed through the iokit registry. About the only thing I can think of is that it'd be a bit more power efficient to code it up in a small ObjC utility so that the effort taken by 'ioreg -l' to enumerate all of the data and format it as text is avoided. I may do that, in fact.
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While hard data would be nice we can reason that his results are unsurprising.
The older laptop was a more conventional type and thus would almost certainly keep the batteries a bit cooler than the newer, ultrabook style one. Heat accelerates the decline of batteries. I'm not surprised by this result.
PROTIP: Remove your laptop battery if you are running from the mains most of the time and keep it in a cool drawer somewhere.
Re:Survey says... (Score:5, Informative)
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This trick works best if you spend most of your time hooked up to external power. But is still beneficial for devices that get left plugged in for a few days at a time between bouts of heavy use.
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PROTIP: Remove your laptop battery if you are running from the mains most of the time and keep it in a cool drawer somewhere.
YMMV. Most of the heat a removable battery (i.e., designed to be easily removed by the user) experiences occurs due to charging/discharging, since the battery doesn't overlap the hot parts of the motherboard. I never bothered because it is so easy to dislodge the magsafe connector on macbooks.
Re:Survey says... (Score:5, Informative)
PROTIP: Remove your laptop battery if you are running from the mains most of the time and keep it in a cool drawer somewhere.
MacTip: DON'T. Your Mac automatically scales back its clock speed to 1 GHz tops. Brownouts can crash your computer immediately because there is no battery to supply power. Magsafe connectors and no battery are an obvious bad combination. And you'll get dust into your computer.
On Apple you don't need to remove the battery!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
It shows that you don't know the details of Apple's power delivery architecture. Magsafe-equipped Apple laptops are intentionally crippled in that the charger is artificially disabled if you use an unauthorized one. There's a chip in the magsafe plug that connects to the middle pin and is interrogated by the system management on the mainboard. If the interrogation fails, you can still use the power source, but the charger is disabled.
All it takes not to charge the battery is to cover the middle magsafe pin. I've done it by keeping in use one charger with a bad magsafe plug where the chip had died. Died how? Ah, exposure to the saliva of a 1 year old, he liked to lick those plugs, they admittedly taste "funny" since they are energized :)
That way you have the best of both worlds: you don't lose your work if the magsafe plug is kicked loose, and you don't charge the battery if you don't want to. Win-Win.
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It's not the charging that is the issue, it's heat from the laptop. If you removed the battery and just stuck it in an oven at say 40C it would degrade. Batteries are chemical devices, they react to temperature.
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I don't charge my batteries (there are 2 in this machine) above 80% unless I know I'm going to be on battery for quite a while. It seems like a good compromise between the optimal 40-60% and having enough charge to last for my commute.
Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score:5, Informative)
I got 10 hours of battery life on my 2011 macbook air when I first got it. I don't just mean 10 hours of it sitting idle either. I could get 7 hours of continuous play of movies. Then Mountain Lion came out and I was lucky to get 3 hours tops. That lasted 6 months until they "fixed" it and I was able to get 5 again. Now in I can consistently get 4 hours with it sitting mostly idle.
I love the machine but I hate that I cant change the battery myself. I'll have to pay the Apple tax to get this fixed. I am holding out hope for Mavericks though, hopefully the power saving features can breathe some new life into this thing.
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Yikes--same format movie played on both laptops = differing battery lives? Definitely sounds like an OS power bug (or several), unless the movie formats differed (lower vs. higher qual). And if not that, the minute possibility remains that someone in the processor architecture team made a tradeoff in the graphics hardware that didn't work as intended.
Going from 7 hrs active to 4 hrs idle is depressing :(
Re:Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score:5, Informative)
What do you mean you can't change the battery?
Do you not own a screw driver? And you call yourself a geek.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Air+Models+A1237+and+A1304+Battery/848/1 [ifixit.com]
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Did they change anything in the graphics drivers with the OS update? I wonder if maybe hardware acceleration on video either got knocked offline or became really inefficient.
Re:Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the machine but I hate that I cant change the battery myself. I'll have to pay the Apple tax to get this fixed. I am holding out hope for Mavericks though, hopefully the power saving features can breathe some new life into this thing.
If you are willing to unscrew two dozen little screws, the battery swap-out is actually pretty easy according to iFixit. Of course, the battery itself will cost you over $100 bucks new, and Apple only charges about $120 installed, so the only real reason to do it yourself is if you live far away from an Apple Store and don't trust a carrier service with your laptop.
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Yeah, I dont want to void my warranty either.
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You don't want to void a warranty and you call yourself a geek?
How much did you pay for that UID on ebay?
Warranty will be expired by the time most batteries will be needing replaced.
Re:Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you can, and it's not that hard [slashdot.org].
You know what the hardest part of it is? Going to ifixit, getting the screwdriver, and clicking "checkout now".
8 screws for the bottom cover, and 3 more securing the battery to the case. OK I take it back, the hardest part is possibly removing the bottom cover - Apple does use rather strong clips.
The same is true for everything OTHER than the MacBook Pro Retina 15", which has annoyingly-glued in batteries. I think the 13" is on a carrier frame.
It definitely isn't rocket surgery.
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This seems like a lot of work. I like laptops that allow me to push a switch and drop out the battery and swap in the spare in about 5 seconds...which would be almost every other laptop in the world other than ones made by Apple?
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Those laptops also get hours less battery life. I'd rather have a laptop taht works great for three-four years and then requires a battery change once, than one where I'm swapping out batteries weekly.
I also had Mac laptops back when you could pres a button and remove the batteries. The batteries generally lasted only a year, then were worthless and had to be replaced.. go back to that world? No thanks.
Re:Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score:4, Informative)
If your battery was great until a software update, then the problem probably isn't the battery but the software, and replacing the battery won't solve your problem.
I really enjoyed this article (Score:2)
I seem to be constantly fighting the battle with battery life, and it is a topic that I am acutely worried about, thanks to the newest generation of phones which seem to have settled on non-replaceable batteries. I found this very interesting. Glad someone took the time to take these measurements and write it up.
non-replaceable batteries (Score:2)
They are considered disposable and if you can make it until the next upgrade cycle/treadmill they don't care.
For those of us who actually buy our phone outright, it sucks.
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What do you mean non-replaceable?
Do you not know how to work a screwdriver?
Lefty loosy, righty tighty. You can order the battery and driver online if the latter is an oddball shape.
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With voided warranty.
And that's assuming you can find the replacement parts for your model, which isn't straightforward for anything other than iphones.
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If it was under warranty you could have them do the work for free. So which is it? You are under warranty and don't need to worry or you are not and voiding it does not matter?
Bullshit, I have found parts for many smartphones, including screens and power ports. No different than getting ebay laptop parts.
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I would also like to mention that I opened and inspected a Nexus 7. When I found out that unit was still under warranty I returned it and they fixed the issue free of charge. So the warranty clearly was not voided.
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Treat laptop batteries as risky UPS. (Score:2)
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That's not really the point of a laptop battery. Also, doesn't leaving it plugged in all the time kill the battery faster than anything?
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#1 is because most (all?) Li-Ion batteries can only be charged a few hundred times. Even a partial charge from 95% back up to 100% can count as a "charge cycle". So one tactic is to change your power management settings so that it doesn't start a charge cycle until the battery hits 80-90% levels.
#2 is heat.
How do you think monitoring works? (Score:2)
Letting the battery cycle? (Score:4, Informative)
Most modern lithium batteries should *not* be cycled or discharged "fully"--such a practice degrades the battery capacity quite rapidly. I think the practice of fully discharging the battery comes from the NiMH-type rechargeable AA(A) batteries.
Yeah, sometimes people recommend fully discharging a lithium battery during operation so that the monitoring software can recalibrate it's battery power meter to adjust for the decline in total capacity, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
As mentioned earlier, temperature is a big factor as well. Maybe Haswell will save the day...
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No modern li-ion battery will let you charge or discharge it far enough to cause actual damage. You can treat them however you like cycle-wise and you'll get about the same total lifespan out of them. Using the battery and how long has passed since manufacture are by far the limiting factors.
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No modern li-ion battery will let you charge or discharge it far enough to cause actual damage.
Tell that to Boeing.
A battery of battery information (Score:3)
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batteries should *not* be cycled or discharged "fully"
It depends on what you mean by "fully discharged".
Yes, if you discharge a LiIon battery completely to 0V, the battery will be damaged. This is why all LiIon batteries (should) have a battery management system [wikipedia.org] that monitors the battery's voltage and cuts off power once the voltage falls below a certain level, somewhere around 3V per cell for LiIon.
I use LiIon batteries in RC cars with the cutoff voltage set to 3.2V/cell and the batteries stay within a couple % of their original capacity even after disch
Perfectly valid (Score:5, Informative)
I love studies with a sample size of one. No statistics, no variability. Definitive.
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Its not a study. It's just someone monitoring their own laptops battery life. Lighten up.
Re:Perfectly valid (Score:4, Insightful)
But he published it, and then Slashdot picked it up, and people are actually interpreting the 'data' and making conclusions. This is how crap like thimerisol=autism gets out there.
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Its not a study. It's just someone monitoring their own laptops battery life. Lighten up.
Then why is it being reported on at a news website?
Re:Perfectly valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the author insisted that it was the definitive study on how all Macbook batteries behave, so we've got to hold him to that standard. I'll go further: this cad didn't even have this published in Physical Review Letters, much less Science or Nature. He didn't even get it peer reviewed, and... my God, there's no conflict of interest statement! Who was his ethics board?!
Sweet Jesus, I'll bet he isn't even working in a laboratory!
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every apple product (Score:2, Informative)
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That is because each one is more scratch resistant.
Android phones are the same, I only own those actually. The harder the glass gets the more brittle iy is.
Their malfunction rate went up with volume, not really surprising. I hate to be defending Apple, but you are being rather unfair.
Siiiiigh, the SMC provides an ESTIMATE (Score:5, Insightful)
Calculated battery capacity is an estimate, nothing more, used by power management to decide when the computer should be force-slept, then suspended to disk to keep from damaging the battery (ie, it's not useful to wake up too late from sleep to do the suspend-to-disk.)
The SMC's estimate is just that: an estimate. Errors build up over time, and certain things fake it out a bit. For example, note the capacity, unplug the laptop, use it for 30 minutes, plug it in. Immediately the value will be different. It'll change again when fully charged. Your battery capacity didn't actually change. Even in a perfect world, since batteries have internal resistance, capacity gauges can never be perfect(if you draw at X you'll get less power out than if you draw out at X*0.8), and the battery's capacity varies with temperature. Battery degradation is impacted by temperature as well, so unless you're controlling for temperature of the pack, this was a completely useless endeavor. The only way this would have been useful would've been to cycle several (probably a dozen or more) batteries on lab-grade equipment in a temperature-controlled environment.
The noise and big upward swings alone should tell you that using the SMC's estimate for the purposes of statistical analysis or trending is virtually useless.
The stupid shit I see "enthusiasts" of any product obsess over is absurd. The time wasted on such an exercise far outweighs the impact it possibly could have had on the author (and probably even 9-10 other people combined.) The batteries last for well over 6 hours. Most people using a ultrabook with the battery life of a Macbook Air have plenty of opportunities to charge their machines during the course of a day.
Re:Siiiiigh, the SMC provides an ESTIMATE (Score:5, Insightful)
You get around the error in the estimate by looking at a large number of readings. There are plots showing that the style of usage has not changed with time, so I don't see how the downward drift could be caused by something like sampling when the battery is full or when its empty. I am also fairly sure that when you do a full cycle that lets the battery controller recalibrate. The 'study' may not be perfect, but I have never seen a better one (studies on discharging cells at constant currents and temperatures don't tell you all that much about laptops).
Yes temperature is an issue for batteries. But the temperature of a laptop battery is dominated by the design of the laptop, and how much current is being drawn (or charged) to it. Maybe the previous macbook pro was only used in a aircon'ed office and the macbook air is being used in a steel mill, but i think that would have been mentioned.
This study only covers 2 laptops (and only one in high detail), but its worth 10 times all the battery anecdotes that you hear around the web because it contains measurements. I hope some more people try his script, and post the results.
Continuous charging kills batteries (Score:2)
My laptop is rarely off AC power. When I had the charger set to stop charging at 100% (and to recharge when 90%), my battery life greatly improved. OId battery dropped 60% in reported capacity in less than 2 yrs; new battery is barely down 30% in the following 4 years.
I call it Chinese electron torture for your battery -- drip, drip, drip.
I don't know how OS X controls battery charging, but all OS's should provide an option to stop charging at 100%.
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Cycle count is meaningless (Score:2)
Without knowing how deep the cycle was. Furthermore, the rate of discharge and temperature during the discharge will also have a fairly significant affect.
Basically, you will get about 1/10th the charge cycles out of a battery that is nearly completely discharged vs one that is only discharged to 10%.
Its better to really think of LI as providing a fixed number of watt hours. You can consume them in small bites, or you can consume them in big chunks but once you consume them they are gone.
The best rule for l
Thank you (Score:2)
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Ha, I actually stopped reading at "Without further adieu". But that says more about me than the author, I suppose...
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Ha, I actually stopped reading at "Without further adieu". But that says more about me than the author, I suppose...
Maybe it is the unconscious suggestion that he had finished what he was saying? An unconscious Alt-F4 -- the adieu button.
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Alt-F4... Give me a little credit, will ya? I'm running Mint on my MBP, you insensitive clod!
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Sometimes I wonder on slashdot if I should add [sarcasm] or [irony] or [humour] regularly just in case -- things can rapidly wander off into the abyss otherwise -- but I think we're more or less on track here ...
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Re:Two Things (Score:5, Funny)
1) It's "without further ado," not adieu.
You're making much adieu about nothing.
Cockadieudledoo!
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I don't think so. State-of-health measurement can be a subtle art but it all comes down to measuring the cell's voltage and resistance over time*, which at the end of the day you're getting for free when the battery is in use.
*Looking for voltage sag, rising internal resistance, or simply less area under the curve.
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I guess what I'm saying is that there shouldn't be anything changing from the battery's perspective; the "multimeter" is always plugged in, as long as the computer's on. Unless the battery testing itself was driving up the power demands from the laptop, and thus drawing more current from the battery, it shouldn't make a difference.
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Re:Two Things (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Laugh (Score:5, Funny)
Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Presumably the same reason someone pays big bucks to drink coffee made from coffee beans that have been in a civet's anus. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Laugh (Score:4, Informative)
Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Maybe because that hasn't been most peoples' experience [osxdaily.com]? I have a MacBook Pro that is almost 3 years old and the battery is still almost as good as the day I bought it. Of course, I make sure to run mine down once a month as recommended.
Re:Laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple get the same batteries from the same places everyone else does. They're as fungible as AAs at this point.
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Apple get the same batteries from the same places everyone else does. They're as fungible as AAs at this point.
Sure. That same place sells cheap batteries, more expensive batteries, and even more expensive batteries. Guess what batteries Apple buys.
One reason why Apple's laptop batteries are non-removable is because that allows them to pack the cells more tightly together and fit any empty space in the MacBook, that's how they fit more capacity in tighter space. So the batteries that Apple uses are definitely not the same that you get elsewhere.
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Bad batteries something Apple is famous for, RAM fixed to the logic board, insecure and buggy OS, and a host of other complaints makes me wonder why anyone pays the premium for Apple any longer.
Your point would be an excellent one if reality wasn't exactly opposite to every statement in your post.
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A requirement of the form factor. If you check, most ultrabooks in a similar formfactor already solder the RAM on board. You can find ones with removable RAM but they typically are pushing the "Ultrabook" definition because Intel couldn't get anyone to make them otherwise (typically they have hard drives, or 15" screens or are heavier and significantly thicker).
Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper
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Dell 6430u, actually manages this quite well.
It uses an SSD and a 14" display. Honestly the best Dell I have seen in years as far as build quality goes.
Typically markup on day of sale on RAM upgrades from the OEM are 100%. We always get them with a lower amount of RAM and order more from newegg to have it arrive the same day.
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Though, to be honest, I've rarely ever installed additional RAM in any PC I had - given its cost, it's usually cheaper to buy the max up front than in a few years when memory standards change and it's difficult to buy it cheaply (e.g., DDR or DDR2) - especially the larger modules - they either simply stop existing or are still wildly expensive years later.
I've never bought a Mac with RAM fixed to the logic board; and with pretty much every Mac I've ever bought, I've bought it with the minimum RAM configuration and then gone third party to top it up either immediately or within 2 years -- usually saving a few hundred dollars. The one thing Apple IS known for is overcharging for RAM. They've always done this, even back in the SIMM days. They argue that it's because they have higher standards, and thus you're only getting the best RAM from them. I've NEVER
Re:Power storage that doesn't degrade... (Score:5, Informative)
Because of the whole host of other problems with that suggestion.
Here is a small set of them, there are many more
1. expensive fuel cell
2. low density storage unless you go with expensive metal hydrides
3. H2 embrittles everything
4. far cheaper to make H2 via steam reformation of natural gas than electrolysis
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I don't need to think about it, the numbers are available. Batteries beat fuel cells if you use electrolysis.
Portable electronics use far more power than any small cylinder will provide. H2 is terrible volumetrically. Compressing it will not be enough, nor will liquefying it. Metal hydrides are the only option.
Your pockets are airtight? What kind of pants are you wearing?
I would not be surprised on bit, it is terrible compared to metal hydrides or batteries.
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http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2012+Battery/10950/1 [ifixit.com]
Does it hurt to be that stupid?
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Not something one can do when your battery gets low and you want to swap it out sitting in a coffee shop.
In my opinion, to be user replaceable, there should be no tools required (perhaps a latch one can turn with a dime would be OK). Certainly not a proprietary Apple 5 point driver bit.
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Really? You can't remove screws in public?
This user always has his multitool with him. The screws are not Apple proprietary they are available to anyone who wants to use them and you can easily swap it over to whatever you like for screws.
Could it be easier? Sure, but then rigidity of the case goes down. The dell 6430u is a pretty decent compromise. I personally don't swap batteries much so I am not worried about it.
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