As a proud Macbook owner for over two years now, I have continually been impressed by the durability of this machine and the quality of Apple’s computers. I know I have had a few bumps in the road regarding certain hardware, specifically my optical drive that needs to be replaced yearly apparently! But my Apple Care coverage has taken care of all my issues, and I have had my machine upgraded with very little cost to myself. I upgraded the hard drive from 60 to 120 GB, I took my ram up from 2 512MB cards to 2 1GB cards, and now I have finally upgraded the final element lacking in my 2 year old Macbook: the battery.
If you have ever owned a Macbook, or if you currently own one, you know that the Macbook battery doesn’t last very long. I know laptop batteries in general are short lived, and in most cases, the Macbook’s battery is said to last from about 1 1/2 years to 2 years. Well, I have had mine for over two years now, and this is my first replacement battery, so I think I did well. Apple sells a replacement battery for $129, which is probably a small price to pay depending on how often you use your laptop wireless, but I really didn’t want to spend $129, so I do what I always do, shop around. I found alternate Mac product dealers that sold a new battery for less, bringing the price down to about $115 or even $100.
Then, I decided to check eBay for deals, and there I hit the jackpot. EBay is notorious for great deals, and I always try to find a great buy it now price. My goal initially was to find a battery for under $100, and I got more than I expected. While I was searching the Internet for new batteries, I completely forgot about the option to buy refurbished, which I know can be tricky with things like batteries, but if you find a good deal, you can get a great product for a low price, and that is exactly what I found. I found a refurbished Macbook battery for $44 plus free shipping.
Now, when I say refurbished, basically, the casing of this battery is used, you can tell, it looks used like my old battery, but the metal inside and underneath the white plastic is brand new. It appears to be a completely new cell. On top of that, I charged it up and tested it out- while I am connected to wifi, with multiple programs running (Safari pages, Mail, Calendar, Aim) I am getting 3.5 hours on a full charge! That is a tremendous amount of time for online usage! My old battery didn’t last 5 minutes on a web page before I replaced it, so 3.5 hours for $44 is a jackpot for me. Now, I didn’t check to see what the offline time was for the battery, but I am assuming it is something like 5-6 hours if I disconnect from the Internet. So this is basically a new battery in old battery clothing! A fabulous deal I would say!
{This has been reposted from blackalligator.blogspot.com}