Last Summer I purchased a 1.2GHz iBook—it was and still is shweet. However, the passage of time has seen the amount of useable battery diminish from four-to-five hours (or all day if use was intermittent) to about two hours. My wife's G3 iBook has been limited to tethered use for some time.

That said, dead and dying batteries really defeat the purpose of having notebooks and a home wireless network. In our case, that covers most of our quarter acre—home, deck and garage.

Also, because I have children and an after job (ie part-time evening work), I really need to be able to work wherever the kids are and, at five years old, they are always on the move.

An old dilemma

Having owned various Apple portables over the years—my first was a PowerBook 170—I know the first thing to go invariably is the battery. However, in the past, buying a second battery or replacing the cells only extended the misery.

With two iBooks to keep running, I knew we needed batteries, but just getting new cells would only be a stop-gap measure. This time we don't just want our mobility back, we want it to be long lasting and flexible.

Better than new

The combination of products that solves the problem is NewerTech's NuPower Li-Ion Battery (4800mAh, $140; 3600mAh, $120) and Battery Charger / Conditioner ($150), which can extend the life of older batteries returning them to almost-new condition.

After "conditioning" the fresher cell in my 1.2GHz iBook again offers all-day usability and the "dead" battery of my wife's three-year-old G3 iBook delivers nearly three hours of untethered use. Moreover, the 4800mAh NuPower battery we share can provide up to seven hours of steady use (wow), which is a whole day of family stuff away from home.

Going green...

For our family, because we now have three useable batteries and a charger, we're never without a fresh cell, which is precisely what we wanted. Further, purchasing a NewerTech NuPower battery and Battery Charger / Conditioner costs just a little more than purchasing two "new" batteries.

And, the kicker? We get to save the environment (Newer offers battery recycling, too) just a little because our dead or dying batteries didn't need to be thrown out just yet. That's cool...

What's your take?