A couple of years ago I purchased three APC BE325 UPS units for our home entertainment system and the setup in the Bedroom. We have used DVRs like ReplayTV and TiVo for pretty much all our TV watching since 2001. DRVs are specialised computers, as such it makes a lot of sense to protect them from power failures and surges.

Yesterday I submitted a request for a new battery for my work laptop, a Macbook Pro. The serial number it fell under indicated it could be defective and it was covered under the Apple exchange program. Indeed, I had experienced shorter battery life and then the machine would spontaneously shut down (presumably to the lack of charge) even when the battery indicated it had 60 minutes or more life in it. Finally, over the long weekend, it failed completely. The battery failed to charge at all and contained 0% charge.

Well, much to my suprise, a new battery arrived today, less than 24 hours after the request was put into the Apple site.

The battery life on my office laptop, a 15 inch MacBook Pro, has been getting shorter and shorter. Recently the computer would conk out at, what looked to be, half a charge. As you can imagine, if you are travelling and working on a document and suddenly your computer dies it can be somewhat distressing. Last night when I powered the machine up to do a little work, the computer indicated that there was no battery available at all. I flipped the computer over and verified that the battery was installed correctly. This battery has completely ceased to charge.

I had been thinking about taking it to the genius bar at our local Mac Store--Metro Denver has three--when I googled "Macbook Pro Battery Charge Failure" and was suprised to find this exchange page which indicates that they are doing a battery swap. Normally Apple sends a notice to all those who could be affected by a recall. In fact, my wife recieved two such notices on her iBook.