About 6 months ago I purchased a new FastMac extended battery for my MacBook Pro, I was really happy with the little bit of extra time it gave me on my power hog of a laptop, but lately it would barely last the 45-minute trip on Caltrain from SF to Palo Alto. So I hooked up the miniBatterLogger app. According to this great bit of software, it seems the battery capacity is at about 50%. Not a very good life expectancy, considering the original batter which is at about the same number of cycles is at 90% and about twice as old as well.

My conversation with FastMac then went something like this….

——- (contents dumped from memory, so this isn’t the exact conversation)
…

FastMac: Well for a MacBook Pro this sounds like a reasonable reduction.

Me: [pause] 50% in 6 months is reasonable?

FastMac: Well yes… well let me ask someone in tech support please hold.

Me: [hold]

FastMac: I’ll tell you what’s happening. The software you’re using to measure the cycles in the battery isn’t changing from one batter to another. The cycles listed is what was on your original battery. Yep that’s definitely what’s happening.

Me: The software is telling me my battery cycles have changed when I switch out the original and the new one, so I’m pretty sure it’s counting the cycles correctly. If you want to tell me that 50% over 6 months is reasonable,

FastMac: please hold

Me: No wait! Let me finish… If you say it’s reasonable then we can forget this RMA but I won’t be buying any more of your batteries in the future.

FastMac: Oh, well these batteries are funny things. I mean the numbers and everything are really just jibberish… hold please….

Me: [hold]

FastMac: Sorry about that…

Me: Well the battery life is pretty much half of my original batter, that’s why I started measuring the capacity in the first place.

FastMac: Right, that’s exactly what we where going to ask you. … Well again it’s really hard to tell with these batteries, but it does sound like you actually have a problem here….

Me: [continues with RMA]
…

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