New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 01. 6.09
Photo via Gizmodo
New battery technology in the 17" MacBook Pro was shown off at MacWorld today, which lays claim to a battery life improvement of 60%. The new battery can last up to 8 hours on a charge, and can be charged 1,000 times, equivalent to about 5 years. It's also recyclable at the end of it's life. But there are even more green features to this new technology.
Apple made a block of batteries, rather than the usual cylindrical cells that end up wasting space. The newly utilized space allows the notebook to have a 40% bigger battery, without making the notebook bigger. The problem, of course, is that you have to take the notebook apart if you want to replace the battery.
But the upside is that it will last three times longer than the industry standard. The trick for making it last longer is using a chip within the battery that communicates with each cell to make adjustments to the current for each cell. This means a maximized battery life.
With it lasting so much longer, and being recyclable at the end of it's life, that alone is enough to get Dell to hush up a bit. But additionally, Apple has a take-back program for the batteries, making recycling even easier, and it is EPEAT Gold, arsenic, BFR, mercury, PVC free, and touts 34% smaller packaging.
Via Gizmodo Live Blogging at MacWorld
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Well done, this is a great step forward, I hope Apple apply this battery system in all its products.
They can't put it in all their products because not all their products have extra space.
Just another Apple gimmick to keep service and modification out of the hands of the user.
If you can't open it, you don't own it. -- Owner's Manifesto (makezine.com)
I'm with mystech. I hate that companies (apple in particular) that don't allow for quick battery changing by the end user. To me it is just planned obsolescence. There are plenty of people who would rather buy a new computer than send theirs in to get a battery swapped out.
How is 1000 charges equal to 5 years?
in 2 years a mac wonk will have shelved it with a new shiny that's over priced and closed, at which point 12 hour days of battery only use would have killed it. about 3 years after that they'll need to have the battery replaced so that they can show off their first generation shiny as proof of their fanboydom.
seriously, i'm not seeing the rest of the hardware lasting 5 years, and i know of very few machines that are run that long given the power needs of every upgraded software.
on the green note, when are we going to see energy numbers on how they justify milling their machines.
Hard to be green when you make stuff. The stuff is a big problem for living sustainably. That said, if there is going to be a sustainable future that doesn't necessarily involve returning to living only in small villages and cities and the corresponding decrease in world population that would be required for us to live that way, if we're going to have a technologically and scientifically advanced future, then we need intermediary steps, and we need improvements like this.
Can they go further? Yes, and I hope they do, and I hope that their target market responds well to these modest improvements. I do think it would be advantageous for Apple to open their hardware, but it would take a fair bit of time for that to pay off, and they would necessarily have less control over their core market and by extension the company itself-- something that has not gone well for Windows PC manufacturers, who have seen profit margins shrink over time. Could Apple, with their hardware expertise, handle being the Microsoft for the 21st century? Yes, I believe they would do a better job of it. At the same time, Apple does some pretty nefarious shit that they could not get away with if they owned 70% of the OS market.
I like Fujitsu lifebooK T4210 battery, I have it for one year.the shop http://laptopsbattery.us/fujitsu-lifebook-t4210.htm is not bad.