MacBook Air's Battery is Actually Easy to Replace

pizzach noted that the MacBook Air battery is actually fairly easy to replace. "All it requires is a philips screwdriver. Unlike some of Apple's other products, the battery is not so soldered in which should make a lot of people at least a little bit happier." I think I'll have to wait for something with a bigger screen and a faster clock speed.

Re:Can I get that through airport secuirty...

[russ1337]

I'm not sure your problem is a big one. There'll be aftermarket chargers and top-up devices coming out of belkins ears before you know it.

I recall having been asked to REMOVE the battery from my laptop at airport security. THAT is something that will cause problems if you get the wrong TSA agent.

Re:I don't mean to troll but...

[splortnik2003]

Yeah, this is true. I don't know why it doesn't bother me as I'm someone that used to buy extra batteries by default with any new laptop. Probably a combination of more plugs on flights, a pretty good claimed battery life, and exposure to the Apple RDF.

Ask Slashdot: Battery life with the SSD option?

[G4from128k]

I'm wondering about the battery life with the solid state drive option. Apple states that the machine gets 5 hours on a 37 W-hr battery -- suggesting an average power draw of about 7.4W. Cursory Googling suggests that SSD draw about half the power of a normal HD -- perhaps 0.5 W less. That suggests that the SSD version might get more than 5 1/2 hours. Of course the SSD option comes with a faster processor which might taketh away that extra battery life.

But all this is just speculation and BOTEC. Has anyone got their mitts on an SSD MBA and tested battery life???

Re:Something bigger/faster

[Tony Hoyle]

What *is* the point.

What market segment up until now were saying to themselves "If only this laptop was exactly the same size but *thinner*"

My boss travels a lot on airlines and was waiting for an ultraportable macbook. He wanted one *smaller* - that could fit nicely in the limited space on airline seating in the way a normal laptop won't. This doesn't either.. so it's a missed opportunity.

The other thing he asked for - solid state disks (hard disks don't last long if you fly a lot) - was answered, but he won't be getting the Air.

There are probably going to be battery options...

[NeverVotedBush]

It's pretty simple, really. The magnetic charge port. Apple can offer a battery pack that recharges the Air's battery, extends operating time, etc. It would be just like the AC power supply except it would run off of DC. It could still run with typical laptop batteries (Li-ion and such) for high power densities but it also wouldn't need to be some oddball configuration that drives up manufacturing costs. It could be a basic brick more or less.

The Air has a power port. Getting extra run time when on aircraft without power plugs, etc, is nothing more than supplying power to the power port.

Efficiencies also depend on how Apple configured the power port. With just a little forethought, they could have made it where a portable power pack (i.e. auxiliary battery) just runs the Air itself and doesn't recharge the onboard battery. That would be more efficient than accepting charging efficiency losses and the only down side would be having to carry an assembly with cord instead of just an extra battery. A fairly acceptable compromise to trying to make removable batteries in such a tight form factor.

Re:I don't mean to troll but...

[DrXym]

Like the iPods, the mechanics (structure) involved to make the battery as easy to remove as say, the macbook, would add a significant amount to the size of the unit. The battery latch on the macbook is roughly the size of a nickel. Would you like your ipod to be 1/8" thicker just to add a latch for the battery?

I don't accept that for a second. Apple is allegedly a company which comes up with clever designs, yet not for batteries it seems. Instead they expect people either to throw away their otherwise fully functioning iPod / Air and buy a new one, or do without an iPod / Air for a week or more while its sent off to some expensive replacement program. And in the case of iPod you're not even guaranteed to get back the iPod you sent out.

I doubt it would add any significant thickness to the Air to add a battery compartment. Who says it even has to be accessed from the underside? It could be slotted in from the side or in some other way that might allow Apple to call it an innovation.

If this were any other company but Apple, people wouldn't be making excuses for them. Sealed in batteries suck and Apple's use of them is a cynical ploy to force people to upgrade a few years down the line when they die.

Re:Keep waiting

[Bobartig]

Dell makes a 20" portable, it even has a big beefy integrated handle. At 18.3 lbs, you could use it for some curls on the go, as well.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m2010 [dell.com]

Being a non-coder working in game development, I had to use IDEs every day, mainly Visual Studio and ProDG. VS was pretty easy to get to a 'reasonably productive' state with a few clicks, but ProDG (for PS3) was this labyrinthine mess, spawning split windows everytime you tried to click anywhere.

Re:Keep waiting

[CastrTroy]

Yes, it would be ridiculous [laptopmag.com]. It's not quite 30 inches, but it's still huge. Seriously I don't know why people buy these things. Buy a smaller laptop and hook it up to the big screen when you get to the office/home.

Re:I don't mean to troll but...

[djh101010]

I think it depends on the Mac. I've tried to open a grand total of two Apple laptops. One was surprisingly accessible and easy to crack open, one was a nightmare. Don't mean to be harsh, but more generally it's a bit lazy to think that getting the basic user experience right (thoughtful, consistent UI for example) is necessarily at odds with being able to pop open the hood.

I've been inside 3 Dells, one Toshiba, and one IBM Thinkpad. All three of them were a certified pain in the ass. Not sure how "hard to work on stuff inside" is in any way unique to Apple. In the case of the Air, from the pics, it's a case of "unscrew the cover and unplug the battery", which oddly enough is exactly the same thing I had to do to upgrade RAM on my Dell D600 - unscrew a cover, unplug something, and plug something else in.

Not disagreeing with your point, don't get me wrong - but it's funny that so many people started out whining about the battery not being replacable (it is), are now complaining that you need to (GASP!) use a screwdriver to do it. It's really not a big deal. The only drawback I see is that you can't have two batteries and swap them on the fly. I don't spend that much time away from some sort of power outlet, so for me, it's a non-problem.