Re: This is for the O.E.M's supporting the TabletPC.

On Feb 18, 2009, at 9:33 AM, Ben wrote:

> You seriously want an embedded non changeable battery that lasts a
> paltry 8 hours, compared to the figures of more than twice that (19
> hours) for the new smaller, lighter, cheaper Dells? To top it off, the
> 17" is anything but portable for daily use, so who cares how long the
> battery lasts anyway - not to mention using it as a desktop
> replacement will be horrible for your neck and eyes (got the physio
> bills to prove that one).

I'm sure I'm going to regret starting an Apple flamewar here later, but:

* The vast majority of customers do not ever buy a second battery, and  
have never even swapped out the main battery.  If those 90% of  
customers can forgo a replaceable battery and, in return, achieve a  
far longer battery life, that's a pretty good trade-off.  (The figures  
are somewhere around 90%; Apple do survey their customers, and they  
aren't stupid.)  I've always bought an extra battery for my laptop so  
I can use it for longer on the road, but am perfectly happy to have a  
single, non-replaceable battery if the battery life is far better.

* The 17" is perfectly portable for daily use.  I carry it around with  
me every day in a pretty small backpack[1], and have been using it for  
about a year now.  I used to have a 13" MacBook before that, and a 15"  
MacBook Pro before that.  You can use the 17" pretty much everywhere  
that you can use the 15"; width isn't a problem, and it's less than an  
inch deeper than the 15".  The new 17" is still under 3kg, which is  
far, far lighter than other 17" laptops (and lighter than many 15"  
laptops).

* Battery life on many Dell & Sony laptops are better because the  
machines simply aren't as powerful.  I know all about the cute little  
Sony VAIO laptops and their incredible 8-9 hour battery life, but  
you're talking about a low-voltage 1GHz chip in there. The 17" MacBook  
Pro is a dual-core chip that goes up to 2.93GHz, has two GPUs inside  
it that are perfectly adequate for playing modern games, and a  
1920x1200 17" LCD that draws a substantial amount of power too.  Even  
if Apple's 8-hour battery life claim is far beyond what you expect and  
you "only" get 5 hours out of it, that's pretty good considering all  
the horsepower that you get in there.

* I use the 17" as a desktop replacement; just grab a laptop stand and  
you're done.  (It's not like this is a MacBook-Pro specific problem,  
anyway.)

1. InCase Nylon Backpack: http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/nylon-sling-pack-cl55026

> In the case of the 17", whoever decided to market portable devices
> without swappable batteries should be shot. Hard.

Lots of consumers may complain about a non-replaceable battery, but  
very few of them actually ever end up replacing it.


-- 
% Andre Pang : trust.in.love.to.save  <http://www.algorithm.com.au/>



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