I've had generally pretty good luck with Apple laptop batteries. The Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery in my PowerBook 5300 lasted through the machine's useful life span (six years, counting the three years my daughter used it in high school and college) and at 11 years plus now will still hold a bit of a charge. The original lithium-ion battery is also still in my 1998 WallStreet PowerBook, although it will only hold a charge for a few minutes work, but is still good enough to keep the memory alive for a day or so of sleep time. Not a problem for an old machine that stays mostly plugged in when it's used at all. The original battery in my 65 month old G3 iBook, now handed off to my wife, is still in fine fettle, still accepting a charge to an astonishing 97 percent of its original 4200 mAh capacity according to the Coconut Battery utility. Ditto for my 17" PowerBook G4, whose battery (manufactured in 2004) still shows 4,888 mAh of its original 5,400 mAh capacity (90 percent)

The exception has been my Pismo PowerBook, whose original battery died around its 3rd anniversary in 2003. True, the 'Book was a year old when I got it, and the battery had evidently been cycled a lot (although the machine itself was in virtually flawless, as-new condition), and was offering only about one and a half hours of runtime by age two years, failing suddenly and completely at the three-year mark. The palm rest over the battery compartment became extraordinarily warm to touch, and then the battery went stone cold dead.

I replaced it with a used unit I got for 80 bucks — not my wisest purchase decision and a false economy as it turned out. The replacement battery (an OEM Apple unit), worked fine when it arrived and for few months subsequent, but then began giving only about fifteen minutes runtime on a full (?) charge. It turns out that that battery had experienced a lot of discharge/charge cycles. It remained able to support the Pismo asleep through some fairly long power outages, and to facilitate orderly shutdowns during power failures, which was fine when I was using the 'Book primarily as a desktop machine, but when I wanted it to do some road work again, I needed a better battery.

Having learned my lesson, this time I replaced it with not just a new battery but an extended life Newer Technology NuPower unit from Other World Computing, and when I bought a second Pismo last spring, I ordered it without a battery and installed a FastMac TruePower one, also extended life. While these batteries are a bit more expensive than standard capacity models, I'm convinced that the extra cost is worth it, at least if you use your machine for road warrioring or live in a locale where power interruptions are a frequent occurrence as they are where I live.

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