I changed the battery in my iPod this weekend. It had been giving me fits for the last few months, conking out after 20 minutes of use sometimes, and other times dying immediately even after I charged it for a few hours. Rather than buying a whole new Ipod, I went to ipodjuice and bought a new battery for $40, with the intention of installing it myself.

The actual process was pretty simple – basically unhook the end pieces, remove some screws, slide the motherboard out of the chassis, unhook the old battery and hook up the new one, and then slap everything back together. But the whole process was so delicate it felt like brain surgery at times. There were so many seemingly fragile pieces, so many parts of the instructions like “WARNING: Do not touch the brown flap or your iPod will implode (of course, I accidentally touched said flap about 60 times).”

Still, I finished in about a half hour and everything’s been fine so far. The battery stood up to four hours of continuous use with nary a glitch.

I had to laugh at two interconnecting ports where identified as “male” and “female.” Hee hee.