A Barking Dog

If you have a first, second or third gen iPod you’ve likely experienced diminished battery capacity, right about the time the extended Apple Care warranty runs out. The iPods have been notorious for the shortcoming of the battery for a few years now. Sometime ago there was a class action suit filed against Apple representing iPod owners with the less than stellar batteries.

At first Apple was charging about US$200 to replace the batteries. After an uproar from die hard iPod fans (count me in in that bunch) they reduced the charge to US$100 for out of warranty iPods. This and other issues with Powerbook batteries forced Apple to craft a page with battery info. Today Apple announced a settlement where they did not admit to a problem, but agreed to replace the batteries free of charge or issue a small store credit or cash, depending on which generation iPod was purchased. The 3rd Gen iPods can get free batteries, 1st and 2nd Gen get cash or a small credit. Users that paid and got batteries under the previous program they’ll give you back half of the dough.

There is a site dedicated to this at http://www.appleipodsettlement.com/ with the details of the offer/settlement.

That still doesn’t fix what I now consider a design flaw in that the battery isn’t user replacable in a US$300 plus portable music player. Mine has had issues for several months, recently down to playing less than an hour on a charge. Fortunatly I have a Belkin battery pack because even at five or six hours of charge, it’s not enough for a full day of travel. Even worse for international when I’ll spend nearly 20 hours traveling. I’ve been looking at alternatives, nothing really has the hardware/software integration of the iPod, even given the few flaws of the iPod. I haven’t yet decided to what to do, get the battery fixed, or get the credit and replace the unit.

Now where the hell did I put that receipt?