My son fragged his MacBook Pro, but fortunately I had gotten theft and damage insurance for it. State Farm paid replacement costs, hardly any questions asked.

This is the second laptop this year I've had to "clone." Carbonite is great, but be aware that a large-scale restore online takes a LOT of time. Fortunately, his old hard drive was still working, and although the display was a total loss, I could firewire it to the new machine and boot it up in "external disk drive" mode (start the Mac while holding down the "T" key).

All the data was easily transfered in less than half an hour.

Now I've got the busted machine, and I'm messing around inside it now that the warranty is kaput. The back opens up easily enough, but when I look to take out the battery (I hate messing with electronics that have power running through them) I find it's held down by a weird five-lobed Torx screw I'd never seen before. My handy set of tiny computer tools has nothing like it.

A little research told me that this is a special, tamper-proof screw requiring a special screwdriver. And get this - you have to show that you're a licensed repair guy or OEM outfit to buy one!

I can understand Apple's rationale for this - this battery is a potential bomb - but geez.