Tuesday, August 4, 2009

MacBook Pro Swelling Battery

Here's yet another reason why I like Apple computers. I've been working at a camp for the summer, and my sister had been using my 17 inch MacBook Pro at home. When I came home for the weekend, she explained that the computer was "being weird." I looked at it and discovered the trackpad was not working right. It was fine until you tried to click it, but once it was clicked (using either tap-to-click or the actual button), it would not register that the click had been released. The computer acted as though the button was being held down. If an external mouse was plugged in, it worked fine, so it was pretty obviously a hardware problem. I had also noticed that same weekend that the back of the battery in the laptop had started to come apart, almost like the battery was bulging out, and the glue was letting go. Since I was just home for a very short amount of time, I didn't really have time to research at all, so I asked my mom to take the computer to the Apple store in Milwaukee. I figured that I'd probably have to pay a bit for repairs, since the computer's at least 6 months out of warranty, but I obviously needed the computer fixed before college. Well, Mom took the computer in, and the Apple Genius at the store looked at it, and immediately said we had a defective battery, and the swelling of the battery was putting pressure on the trackpad, and messing it up. So, for free, they gave us a brand new laptop battery (saving me probably about $100), for an out of warranty computer. No questions asked. That's good customer service.

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