Cue the complaints: 17-inch MacBook Pro without a removable battery?

One of the biggest complaints about Apple’s iPhone is that you cannot remove and replace the battery yourself. On the eve of its final Macworld Expo, it appears Apple is willing to live with that complaint for the newest version of its MacBook Pro line of computers as well.

Apple will reportedly use the Macworld event to unveil a new 17-inch MacBook Pro built using the same unibody process as the other entries in the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. But the real shocker is that it apparently won’t have a removable battery, reports 9to5Mac.

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That site’s sources in Asia expect the new 17-inch MacBook Pro to have much longer battery life (as much as 50 percent longer) than current models thanks to this new of battery, which author Seth Weintraub spectulates could be using Silver-Zinc battery technology — something we’ve talked about in the past when covering the Camarillo, Calif.-based startup ZPower.

If that is true, and again, that’s just Weintraub’s speculation at this point, that is very exciting in my opinion and outweighs the downside of not being able to easily replace your own battery. After all, Silver-Zinc batteries last longer, last through many more charge cycles (they may not degrade for up to 5 years) and are thought to be generally safer than current Lithium Ion batteries. With all that, they are also more expensive, but that might be why Apple is putting them in the high-end MacBook Pro first.

The lack of removable battery in the new MacBook Pro has since been confirmed by AppleInsider sources as well, but they don’t say anything about Silver-Zinc technology.

I can already hear the complaints about the lack of removable battery now — but if they really do last for at least 5 years without needing to be replaced due to the inability to hold a charge, count me in. After 5 years you’ll probably be past the point or close to wanting to replace your computer anyway.

We’ll be at Macworld covering the keynote live on Tuesday morning to see which of the rumors come true.