Thinkpads Forum

I bought a "brand new" genuine IBM battery for my Thinkpad 570 and realized later that it may not give 100% power any more because of its manufacturing date.
Any ideas as to what percentage I might expect (the battery has yet to arrive here)?

Just curious,

Thanks,

RfromR

It could range anywhere from 0 - 80 %. There is no "test" to predict how well the battery will work until you've received it. However, it will most likely be less than 50% from the ravages of time...

Thanks
If I can get an application installed that shows the battery status, I will give the result here.

Hmz, it doesn't charge (it seems)....anybody know how long it may take? I've had it charging for a few hours now.

So: how many hours until I can be 100% sure the battery is worthless?

Update: I found the info, might as well put the link here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... FAN-3QNQJN

Try leaving the computer plugged in overnight with the AC adaptor plugged in and the power off. I have a 570 that I just got in the mail today and it had been sitting so long that the battery took well over an hour just to charge past 0% but went slightly faster once it got past that. Sometimes batteries will be a little troublesome when they are new and haven't been used before and/or haven't been used in a significant period of time.

Yes, 570 is going to be short on battery life in general. I have 4 batteries:

- Original one was DOA.
- Used one, very cheap on ebay, lasts 15-20 minutes.
- Brand new one sealed in the IBM box, lasts roughly 2 hours with wifi
- Another one which arrived inside a very cheap "for parts" 570 (bad LCD) which in total costs less than the new 570 battery, lasts almost as long as the new one.

My thought is that with a Thinkpad which has been discontinued so long, so that no batteries have been manufactured in several years, such as a 570, the only chance of a truly new battery is that place which puts new cells into laptop batteries, batteryrefill.com (note that I have never used their service, but I did hear about it on this Forum).

Thanks for the useful replies AlphaKilo470 and kstuart.

I have had it plugged in+powered off for 7 hours now.

However, if I follow the guidelines in the link its gonna be a lenghty affair : for unused batteries they advice to charge 12 hrs, discharge, charge 12 hrs, discharge, charge 12 hrs!).

BTW, is the colour of the LED a reliable indication of the battery status? At what percentage does it change from orange to green?

Aha, the orange light just started to blink....something is going on in there after all!

Edit 24-08-06: it turned out to be a DOA (the seller promised to send another one). In the meantime I bought and received a replacement battery...which works for at least 2.5 hours (my OS crashed and the battery didn't have enough power to do a restart). Funny thing is that the last 0.5 hour it ran with a battery status indication of 1%. Maybe it could have been/will be even more, but I'm already happy now with 2.5 hours...