$179 to replace the battery of the 17 inch MBP

An Apple spokesman told Gizmodo that the change of the battery for the new MacBook Pro 17" would cost $179 with the After-Sales service. This price is reasonable, since the price of the battery must must be a large part of the cost, given its capacity.
Apple may be slightly optimistic nevertheless (or maybe not) by indicating it should last 5 years at a rate of 200 cycles per annum, which may be a tad on the low side. For comparison, for the machine on which Lionel has written these lines (15" unibody) , has already 80 cycles in less than 3 months and will have some certainly more than 350 in one year. However since this new battery has a significant larger capacity this 350 should be reduced and maybe the 200 per year is not so unreasonable.
Thus even with this intensive use, it could last 5 years, which is altogether interesting.