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• Rechargeable Battery - 17-inch PowerBook G4

  

  Works fine with me...

  Written by FH from Boston

  31/03/2006

  I was worried about making the purchase of the Apple PowerBook batter after reading so many of the negative reviews. Luckily I have the student discount and was able to purchase the batter for $116 and thought I'd bite the bullet and get a battery that matches my PowerBook instead of going third-party, which don't have the cool green LED battery level lights.
  
  I have the latest/last generation 17 inch PowerBook with 2gigs of DDR2 RAM and the 100GB 7000rpm hard drive, dual layer DVD SuperDrive. I purchased this second batter for a coast-to-coast flight I have to make across country (USA). With word processing, iTunes and wireless email/web, with full brightness I get a solid 4hrs.
  
  I follow the recommended battery conditioning posted on Apple's website. I did the following:
  
  1. Plugged my PowerBook until the light was green.
  2. Didn't run the PowerBook for 2 hr.
  3. After the 2hrs, I ran my PowerBook until it went to sleep.
  4. I woke it, then turned it off.
  5. I reconnected the power cable and let it recharge until the light turned green.
  
  *note: I did not turn the laptop on during its first charge calibration. I do this once a week and everything seems to be working fine. Also, if you are not going to be using your battery regularly, store it at 50% charge.
  
  With setting at better performance(airport off), screen at 66% and do light work, I get 4 solid hours of operation. When I do more intensive things, such as Lightwave Modeler and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS2, I get about 3.75 hours.
  
  When settings are better battery life and screen at 25% I get 5 hours of light work(airport off), word processing and iTunes and 4.25 solid hours of doing heavier work.
  
  Lastly, I can watch 2 full-length DVDs on one charge when the screen is at 75% brightness and speakers. …More

  465 of 710 people found this useful

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• Rechargeable Battery - 17-inch PowerBook G4

  

  Battery Exploded

  Written by PS

  2/12/2007

  My battery exploded too! My Macbook Pro gets so hot that you can't TOUCH the bottom of it and have to sit it on another solid surface or it will burn your legs. The battery burst and it coming apart. It's only 1.5 yrs old! …More

  320 of 521 people found this useful

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• Rechargeable Battery - 17-inch PowerBook G4

  

  All of you who only get an hour or less need to have your head checked

  Written by MH from Columbia

  4/02/2006

  I have own a 17" aluminum powerbook since they first came out and i still get 2.5 hours on the original battery and im pretty harsh on it too. I can play a fullscreen online high graphics game like RTCW for a good hour and a half before the computer shuts off on me. If your battery isnt lasting that long try following Apple's steps for reconfiguring the battery...drain it all the way and the recharge it fully recharge it then do the same thing over again and you should now be able to get more out of it. …More

  372 of 653 people found this useful

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