Pulp Free

We had our first death in our iPod family this week. Our 80 GB iPod 5.5 decided to no longer charge even though it was “100% Charged”. “Our” iPod is used the same way every day. C uses it an hour a day while she’s walking in the morning 5 days a week (she’s very dedicated). The nice part is that it will hold a charge for the entire week. Charge it up on Friday, ready to go for her walking on Monday. Rinse and repeat.

So it was quite odd that without the usual slowly depreciated battery life between charges - it just died. So even though the new iPod Nanos just came out - I took a chance on getting a new, user replaceable battery.

Two options. Ship back to Apple for $70 or find one online somewhere (who buys locally any more?). That turned out pretty easy as there’s plenty of review sites and companies to purchase from. For our first effort, I chose iPod Battery Depot.

For about $20 including shipping, a new replaceable battery showed up via USPS. Probably took maybe 3-4 days to arrive. Web site looks a little 1998 if you know what I mean… But I checked out the BBB links, did a little bit of research to see if there were any horror stories out there about them. Seemed decent enough. And for $20 - it was worth a little risk.

Turned out not to be an issue at all. Popped open the iPod and about 5 minutes later the new battery was in. Funny enough as well - the instructions state to run the battery charge down that it came with and then perform a full charge after that for 4 hours. Well - even the trickle that was left from the factory took 2 hours to wind down playing back video! A few days in and everything is still working great! C has her perfectally size iPod for walking and I have my iPhone back! (She was afraid of dropping it… I think the screen size was just too much for her! LOL)

So if you’re in need of a new battery for your iPod - iPod Battery Depot is worth checking out. Be sure to check around for some online coupons… There’s a 15% and $3 off coupon floating around right now…

(There’s no sponsorship here… or hidden links - or referrals… just a good experience…)