Would you buy a notebook with a battery you wouldn't replace?

I currently have 3 batteries on my macbook pro (17 inch). It's nice to be able to go unplugged for 8 hours, but keeping them all charged and swapping them around is a pain in the ass.

I'd personally trade multiple swappable batteries for a nice integrated solution. Especially if it lasted twice as long, and had 3x the lifespan.

And if it goes bad after 3-5 years, $179 for a battery replacement doesn't seem like a huge deal to me.

So, yeah, count me in.

I've just spent £97 to buy a replacement battery for my MBP which became useless after about 200 cycles, so 1000 cycles with 8 hours battery life instead of 2 hours for a similar cost in swapping battery seems like a fair deal. So long as the swapping of the battery can be done over the counter whilst I wait.

Ditto here. 17" MBP (the immediate predecessor of this new one), and the battery's essentially permanent in there for me. 8 hours of text editing, iTunes, and compiling sounds fantastic.

Only thing I picked up was a second power adapter. Now one's at my desk, and another's in my bag.

Note that batteries for these things usually cost $129ish, so $179 for the swap isn't out of line.

I've used laptops as my primary machine for about 17 years now (since whenever the FIRST Thinkpad 700's were introduced). I can only think of 1 or 2 laptops that I've had spare batteries for, and those were usually the ones with horrible runtimes (like an hour). 1 other (a Thinkpad X20 maybe) I bought a replacement battery for when the original died.

I've had 3 Intel-Mac laptops now. The only time I ever swapped a battery was on my first 17" MBP when the battery started physically expanding (there was a warranty replacement for it).

The internal battery thing is really no issue for me personally.

I'm having such a hard time getting over the title to this post. I think the appropriate word here is "couldn't" rather than "wouldn't".

I have never travelled with a spare battery, however on every single laptop I have owned, I have purchased replacement batteries due to battery life reduction. My last Macbook and Dell both went from 1.5-2 hours per charge to 20-30 minutes per charge in a matter of weeks (after owning them for 18 months first of course).

For years now, I haven't traveled with a spare battery. As battery times are extended, the need for spares decrease.

Apple appears to have squeezed a ton of run-time out of this new configuration. If this gets you from New York to San Francisco while being able to watch 2 feature films, are you good?

As my equipment (phones and PC) ages I like to combine parts to maintain them and replace key components that age (drives and batteries). I am not afraid to disassemble my stuff but I take care of it over time and don't want to take a hit on fit and finish. I've seen macs that had been improperly disassembled and reassembled, and they just don't look right -- edges roughed up, rubber/plastic parts misfitting, seams not aligning properly. I would hesitate for this reason.

In short, yes, I would buy a laptop that had no user serviceable battery. I would not refuse to purchase a laptop because of something like this, but for my purposes it's a misfeature. It would compare unfavorably to another machine that had a removable battery, insofar as this specific feature is concerned, but perhaps not overall.

You can't swap batteries in an iPhone either, but you can still carry a "spare"; it just acts as a charger.

I have never swapped a battery out of a laptop, ever. So... yes.

I've never had a laptop battery that I haven't replaced in a year, which reminds me, I need to order one. (I traveled a lot though until recently, maybe that will change.) I've never seen a laptop's battery life claim that was anywhere close to reality either. If Apple (or any OEM) says 8 hours for 5 years, it means 4-5 hours at first sloping down to about one hour in a year. There's sort of a nuclear arms race there that forces all OEMs to lie similarly, because if they didn't the other guy would sell better, though I guess if one were in a position to break the standoff, it might be Apple.

However if I liked the laptop enough, and if I were able to find out via the internet that the battery held up in the real world for a couple years, and really got good life, and was replaceable with a trip to the Apple store, then yeah, it wouldn't be a huge deterrent.

Still, overall I'd consider a user-replaceable battery similar to cruise control on a car. Not 100% necessary, but really nice when it's usable and would I really want to buy one without it?

I don't want to bother with spare batteries anyway. By the time the original battery is dead, the laptop is outdated enough to warrant replacement anyway.

I am a bit worried about exploding batteries, though, therefore them being removable is a plus.

Yes. The improvement in chassis rigidity alone would be worth it. I never carry spare laptop batteries, and I'm not afraid to take apart a laptop to replace one of those non-user-serviceable parts.

I think I once took the battery out of my MacBook, but it was because I was adding memory.

So, yes, definitely.

1000 charges on a $3000 laptop doesn't sound like very many to me...

I own a MacBook Air and I absolutely love it. I'd like 4gb of RAM but besides that I couldn't possibly be any happier. The battery issue never comes up for me.

I already have one, although it took me a little while to even remember that fact.

If the original battery works well before I replace the notebook, yes.