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Will built in battery see other notebooks?

TopGear300

TopGear300

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 21, 2007
121
0
OK so I too was slightly disappointed with MacWorld but I am impressed with the new :apple: 17" MacBook Pro and its built in battery.

I was going to buy it this weekend but does anyone think the macbook will see the day where it has a built in battery? And how soon will it be?

Any opinions ok predictions are always appreciated!!
 
I was thinking the same thing. I don't care about servicing my battery - I want eight hours of battery life! I would buy a new MB if they came with the long life battery.
 
i hope they become the standard in everything.

why do people complain about non-removable batteries in laptops again? because i forgot... :rolleyes:
 
Worth It?

The battery obviously wouldn't be the same size as the 17" MBP and therefore couldn't last as long. Im gunna guess it would last 6-7 hours?
 
they probably will, since they can get an astounding amount of life through one battery...

TopGear300 said:
The battery obviously wouldn't be the same size as the 17" MBP and therefore couldn't last as long. Im gunna guess it would last 6-7 hours?
Click to expand...

sure, they would be smaller on the 13" and 15", but then again those don't need as much power. i would just double the current figures, since that's essentially what they did with the 17".
 
God I hope not.

Their method of not using cylindrical battery cells like conventional batteries probably definitely improved battery life a bit, but the whole story about saving that tiny bit of space taken up by the additional casing probably gained you maybe 30 minutes of battery life.

The reason for the built-in battery is probably due to structural rigidity more than anything else. Perhaps they made the 17" MBP just like the 15" MBP case, and the casing flexed too much with the hole for the battery and harddisk in the bottom of the case.

I bet you that if Apple used the same techniques and battery technology, but made it a replaceable battery, the battery life would be 7:00 - 7:30 instead of 8 hours. That's it. Regardless of what battery technology Apple is using, battery life is always proportional to the volume of space taken up by the battery cells. Look at your 15" MBP's big battery. It only provides around 3 hours of battery life, and it's huge. Would you gain a lot more battery life by taking away the battery casing and getting an extra 3 mm? No, because you don't gain much volume from doing so, nor do you lose a lot of battery volume by making the battery user-replaceable. :eek:
 
^ :confused: By that logic, the old 17" MBP should have gotten 7.5 hours of battery life, no? I think you discount how much space they save by going with a fixed battery. Consider the MacBook Air, which uses a fixed battery not for long-life reasons, but rather for space-saving reasons.

That said, I'll agree that the choice of a fixed battery could well have been made for rigidity reasons moreso than longevity reasons.
 
Demosthenes X said:
^ :confused: By that logic, the old 17" MBP should have gotten 7.5 hours of battery life, no? I think you discount how much space they save by going with a fixed battery. Consider the MacBook Air, which uses a fixed battery not for long-life reasons, but rather for space-saving reasons.

That said, I'll agree that the choice of a fixed battery could well have been made for rigidity reasons moreso than longevity reasons.
Click to expand...

Not to mention the service charge to replace them...

I wonder how much it'll cost?
 
Demosthenes X said:
^ :confused: By that logic, the old 17" MBP should have gotten 7.5 hours of battery life, no?
Click to expand...

No. They're using a completely different lithium polymer for the battery (getting higher mA-hours out of it), and different charging technology, and they're not using simple cylindrical battery cells. By using "rectangular"-shaped battery cells that are flat, there are no gaps between cylindrical battery cells used in every other laptop.

While the 17" LED LCD uses a bit more power than a 15" LCD, the difference isn't much. The additional battery life may also be coming from the larger battery that can fit inside the 17" MBP's casing. The 17" MBP has always had a better battery life (advertised as 6 hours, but 4.5 to 5 hours in reality) than the 15" for this very reason. The improvement to the advertised battery life is 2 hours.


I think you discount how much space they save by going with a fixed battery. Consider the MacBook Air, which uses a fixed battery not for long-life reasons, but rather for space-saving reasons.
Click to expand...

Again, I definitely think you save some space by taking off the casing surrounding the battery. However, the main electrical components required to connect the battery cells to the battery's controller still all have to be there. They've taken out the bulky connectors and replaced them with smaller ones. Apple didn't leave naked battery cells inside the laptop with lots of juice and no connectors. You still need to get that power out of the battery somehow.

I really don't know if you save THAT much space by using smaller connectors. Look at a spare battery. The old 17" MBP battery was almost as large as the keyboard, and it gave you nearly 5 hours of real-world use. The majority of the 40% improvement comes from the new lithium polymer they're using and the use of flat cells. They certainly didn't increase the size of the battery by 40%.


A really large 17-inch aluminium case just flexes more, and cutting holes into the frame doesn't help.
 
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