My Powerbook is slowly dieing. The battery life has dropped from a once-impressive 5 hours to around 20 minutes. I am in two minds as to whether I should buy a new battery for it - Apple want to charge me £87 which seems extortionate given that the machine is probably worth only twice that amount. My question: Can I buy a replacement laptop battery from another place that will be as good as the Apple-branded one? I have found them on eBay for as little as £30, but are these a false economy? Secondly does anyone have an recommendations for manufacturers / retailers that are well-known for making decent aftermarket batteries? For what it's worth my Laptop is a 12" Powerbook G4/1.5GHz PPC/768mb.
On non-official replacement batteries: I got one relatively cheaply about 18 months ago for my old laptop. It started out fine, restoring the 4-5 hour battery life but over this summer it started getting a bit rubbish, ~2 hours I suppose and it just cut out after 40%. Forward to the end of the summer and you got about 10 minutes out of it. I was rather disappointed because it now ties you to a particular seat in the sitting room but its not used enough to change it. So be wary with ones that you don't completely trust.
