[OSX-Users] Battery replacement warranty excuses

[Philip Boulain]

Well, that was a waste of time. Turns out that the "Geniuses" will  
not carry out a warranty battery replacement if your charge cycle  
count is over 300. Say, if you've been using the laptop daily for a  
year. (That mine is as low as 443 after two and a half is somewhat of  
an indicator that I've been using old ThinkPads and the trusty EeePC  
instead.)

For those wanting to avoid fruitless trips to West Quay, dashboard  
widget iStat Pro can show the cycle count; so can a standalone tool  
called Battery Health Monitor.

Needless to say I am not impressed, and given that the "genius'" part  
in this was to boot off an iPod which made "battery consumed" appear  
on the screen in a big, red rectangle, I wasn't about to argue the  
point that it's been cooked for quite some time (literally, I fear--- 
I suspect the capacity loss is actually thermal). Presumably if the  
hard drive died I'd be told it's out of warranty because I dared to  
store files on it.

-- 
| Philip Boulain   PhD student | If you think it's expensive to hire a |
| IAM, ECS, Uni of Southampton | professional  to  do  the  job,  wait |
| http://zepler.net/~lionsphil | until you hire an amateur.--Red Adair |