17-inch unibody MacBook Pro disassembled

[EastTexas]

17-inch unibody MacBook Pro gets disassembled, examined

Let the fleecing begin on a non user changeable battery!
Stop this insidious apple plot! Don't buy one!

[EastTexas]

New Dell Laptop Has 11 Hours of Battery Life

insert ooh's & aah's here...

[badllama]

was I the only one who expected it to come apart in one piece?!  haha!  
I have to admit, I love their new manufacturing process, another great forward movement.

[inedibleshoe]

Any bets this tech will filter down into the 15 and 13 range next rev?

Just a wild idea...what if boxed correctly it became a UPS?
iMac uses the same chips as the portables, so even if you couldn't expect more than 5 hours, it allows the machine to function well on past the initial blackout. No loss of data, important work etc.

It could also be touted as environment saving. Built into the elongated power brick is an auto-switching current control that uses the battery first then when drained it switches over to mains and charges the battery while powering the device. If you could get 5 hours you'd have this 5 off (grid), 3 on effect. Net effect less power draw from the mains.

[Intuit]

I've torn into (repaired) one of their earlier 17" Macbook Pro models.  The PCB on that one covered the entire plane with exception to the harddrive and (bad) slot-loading DVD writer.  Can't see how many boards there are under that main in that initial pic, but that is an amazing departure from the earlier model I disassembled.  (could post a pic)

InedibleShoe:  A particular problem with this unit I noticed, (and this isn't unusual for older IBM-laptops) was the charge/discharge system was severely out of calibration.  It ran in excess of 30 minutes past the time it said the battery was at zero.  It's usually pretty simple to put laptops back into calibration depending upon the model, (sometimes BIOS revision,) manufacturer and health/age of the battery.

While the charge-scheme you mention would eliminate this calibration problem, I can't see it saving me or possibly that of many users any energy.  In fact it sounds less efficient in two differing ways.  As you well know, anytime we convert energy there is a certain amount that is wasted.  The charging process itself, wastes a lot of energy in converting the electricity over to be stored chemically.  This applies to everyone.  For me, the longer it takes to charge the battery, the longer mine stays plugged in.   Once it's done I unplug it.  Also, to ensure that the charge/discharge system stays properly calibrated, the operating system (Windows vs just BIOS alone) is left running to monitor the charge cycle just as it did the discharge cycle.  (laptop is 3-4 years old and still in perfect calibration)  If that's really the design scheme for battery charging, then it would in effect, cause me to spend more time plugged into the mains for the simple fact that I'd always have to wait for a complete discharge before the charging would even begin.  Personally I only do that once every 1-2 months and with that scheme as described, it sounds as though a quick plug-in for "topping-off" the battery would result in reduced capacity.  Given all this, I have my doubts about the MacBook operating this way all the time.  It would certainly be inadvisable and a bad decision on the engineering team's part.

[inedibleshoe]

I was looking purely at reducing power draw from the wall for a desk bound machine. If a machine was running 24 hours a day, then instead of drawing power 24 hours a day it'd be only drawing for 9 and powered by battery for 15 @ 5:3 ratio

For portables, no, it doesn't make sense. Since all it becomes is a spare battery that you don't have to link to the wall to charge your laptop.

But after further thinking the savings are not there. Especially when only a single PC is involved. If the world as a collective all cut consumer desktop  power consumption by 40%..

/Derail

The density inside those MBPs is amazing.

[Intuit]

As much as they cost it ought to be.  Typically with higher densities there are much higher defect rates in the manufacturing process.  Don't know whether they use 6 or 8 layer PCBs but those are remarkably hard to engineer let-alone produce.  Seriously doubt this is a quad-layer board which are more common, but I suppose it's possible if enough of the MB's functions have been confined to ICs and firmware programming executed via CPU.

.
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If the machine is to serve as a desktop computer; staying plugged in all the time then I recommend discharging the battery to ~80% then removing the battery altogether.  Again anytime we charge anything *A LOT* of power is lost in the process.  This is an inefficient use of power.  The battery doesn't (directly) make things more efficient, it's only purpose is to allow for portability.  Even after the full charge is completed, the system will continue to "maintain" the battery; periodically toping it off as charge naturally leaks from it.  Removing the battery will help preserve it for when the desktop eventually is used as a portable some months or years down the road.  That's also more environmentally friendly.

Unfortunately many laptop designs have the batteries integrated into their casings which themselves have one of the four feet.  Removing the battery means one foot on the bottom will be missing; distorts the laptop, contorts the DVD writer and flexes the motherboard; increasing potential for "chip creep" shorting issues later down the road.

[Intuit]

It's ironic that they advertise their product as being "green" but the advanced and complex manufacturing processes required to produce it create far higher defect rates and therefore, waste.  Like with all technologies, those defect rates will eventually decrease with time less the tech be retired or replaced altogether.