Mac Attack – Ibook Battery Replacement

I needed to buy a new battery for my ibook a few weeks back, because the one that came with the laptop has dwindled down to only holding a charge for about 20 minuets.  A 20 min. life for a laptop battery pretty much sucks so I went to the apple store and bought a new one for $120.  Well for some unknown reason Apple doesn’t recycle your old batteries so, I was left to consider what ecologically friendly way would be best for me to dispose of the old power pack.  Well, much to Apple’s dismay I found Newer Tech an apple accessory store online that not only makes batteries that last longer than the standard Mac battery (up to 50%) they also give $20 to send in your old battery to have it recycled.  So yesterday I wondered into the Apple store, a place I am liking less and less due to the apparent growing incompetence of its employees to return my battery.  Oh and it was the 14th day I’d had the battery so I cut it close.

On the incompetence bit (a tangent), I really am beginning to wonder why Apple hires the people it does and how well they really train those people.  It seems like every time I’ve gone in there in the last year, I’ve known more about the products than the sales people, and there’s been more than one occasion where they’ve just been wrong about what they’ve told me.  For instance, they told me I could only upgrade my ibook G4 800 Mhz, to a 512mb of Ram.  Making the total amount of ram, including the chip built in, just a little over 600mb. Well they were wrong, I was able to put in a 1GB chip along with the 125 chip so now my little laptop is more like a rocket-ship than a tricycle.

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