I made a post on Facebook about my MacBook Pro charger which decided to end its own life last night. Unfortunately everyone reads into it way too much. This is the third laptop charger to die in the space of six years, so one every two years on average. After reading the reviews of the MBP chargers it seemed that their average life span is very short, and people had complained theirs lasted only a year before they died. That doesn’t really surprise me to be honest. I guess it depends on how much you use it, I’m not entirely sure.
Anyway, I got completely flamed for saying it’s not uncommon for laptop chargers to die, which in my experience is true. Whilst I was at university pretty much all students had laptops, and many of which whom were friends of mine had a charger die on them. Contrary to this however, some people had their laptops for more than five years using the same charger. Environmental factors probably play a great deal in their life span. Our house is usually extremely warm (my wife suffers from ‘coldaphobia’) so that could attribute towards its death.
Anyway, I’ve got all the details I need and I’m going to see if I can get a free replacement under warranty. Oh also, it’s not the fuse, unless I’m unfortunate enough to have a spare plug-head with a brand new dead fuse.
Weird, I guess I’m a rarity, then having never had a charger die in 15 years of owning laptops (touch wood).
Just pop into iQ, they’ll probably give you a new one right away if you’re still under warranty.
4 years with a PowerBook G4 and still on same charger – and it it gets hard use every day.
Designs change however so maybe the new ones are less robust.
[m]