A combined "did you know" and "well done apple" post here..

I've had my macbook since june2006, its a revA core duo version, and its used pretty much every single day. I've only ever had one problem with it - which was the well documented casing discolourment problem which occurred exactly 1 day before my warranty expired, and apple fixed that problem within 24 hours of me reporting it, and also replaced my CD Drive as it was apparently on its way out (although I never reported a problem with it!).

I don't have applecare, that was just from the standard 12 month warranty.

A few days ago though, my battery stopped charging - it was reporting 0mAh capacity and refused to charge in my macbook, or my friends macbook..it was basically dead. Even though my macbook is now 7 months out of warranty, I decided to phone up Apple anyway and see what they said, hoping that there would be some quick and easy fix they could tell me (beyond resetting the PMU or PRAM, which I had already tried). To my surprise the support guy informed me that they had extended the warranty period for batteries supplied with macbooks that were sold from feb 2006 -> april 2007!

He promptly organised for a brand new, free replacement to be sent out to me, should be here later this week

So if your having problems give them a call - even if your are out of warranty, and they will replace it free of charge. Especially great news for me as my old battery was only giving me 1-2hrs of usage these days, compared to the 4hrs+ I had when it was new. Thats only the second time I have had to contact apple support, and each time they have been brilliant. They may have made a lot of mistakes with their recent products, but support still seems to be top notch