Sunday 16 December 2007

Macbook battery on the blink

When I purchased a Macbook one year ago, it never occurred to me that I should also buy an extended warranty for the laptop.

But then, my Macbook's battery developed a problem recently. All I could see was an X in the battery icon where normally, I would see the charge in percentage. No matter how long I attempted to charge the battery, it couldn't be done. Everytime I pulled the battery adapter from the laptop, it would go pfft!

I sought help from CG Computers, one of Apple's authorised dealers in Malaysia, at their Hardwicke House centre in Penang. Yap Kant, the engineer there, had both good news and bad news for me.

The bad news was, my battery had died. The good news was, my Macbook was still under warranty. But...the warranty was going to expire by the end of this month. He said I had better buy the extended warranty to safeguard my precious purchase. So did Henrick, another their staff.


So while I was waiting for the replacement battery to arrive, I went around to ask a few fellas about the extended warranty.

The first person I asked was Nanis. If ever there is a man who is without doubt totally, absolutely, 100 percent crazy about Apple products, it must be Nanis. He said the extended warranty was fully recommended because anything could always go wrong. He knew of a person who was very lucky with the extended warranty because his motherboard burnt out. For a laptop, a spoilt motherboard would be almost equivalent to the cost of the whole computer itself.

Ted also told me about the same tale. Ordinarily, he said, he wouldn't bother with an extended warranty for desktops but he would recommend it for laptops. Jeffrey, the third person I asked, also said more or less the same thing, that he would buy the extended warranty in my position.

Well, I guess that settled it. When I went back to CG Computers to collect my new battery, I bought the Apple Care Protection Plan. And not a moment too late.


Cost? Not cheap at RM899. But I consoled myself that a new off-the-shelf battery for my Macbook would have cost me RM650. Somehow, it's not so painful now...

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