Thinkpads Forum

I'm curious. Has anyone been inside of an UltraBay Slim battery? I have 2 bad ones. One with physical problems (apparently has been dropped on the connector) and the other is just plain old and worn out.

So I'm wondering whether one has tinkered around inside of one of these things.

Don't think there be user serviceable parts in those waters.

The old, worn out one ... I presume you reviewed the battery details in Power Manager to see the number of cycles and the remaining capacity? The one that I bought with my T43, and drained 100% regularly, has roughly 25% capacity. Just enough to swap out main batteries when one has drained down to critical. I now consider these batteries (I have 3 total) the most disposable of ThinkPad components, right behind the TrackPoint tips.

Thats so sad to hear so many bad things about these batteries. I for one would be buying some IF they were not so disposable. Why in the world would you setup that battery to be the first one drained instead of the main battery? I just can't comprehend.

They need to implement something like the old Dell Inspiron 8xxx series, where it could draw of both batteries simultaneously, even if they were different capacities.

usernotabuser wrote:Why in the world would you setup that battery to be the first one drained instead of the main battery? I just can't comprehend.

So the Bay is freed up as quickly as possible for a different sort of device (usually storage).

It does indeed make good sense for some users, whether or not it makes sense for you.

Cheers,

Bill B.

I believe if they drain simultaneously, that would also mean both batteries will cycle. Thus, both batteries life would decrease by half. Not a good idea in my eyes either.

If both are drained so that they will reach dead at the same time, that's better. Logically, neither battery would be drained as far in this situation. The drain method should be an option in the power manager or BIOS.

usernotabuser wrote:Thats so sad to hear so many bad things about these batteries. I for one would be buying some IF they were not so disposable. Why in the world would you setup that battery to be the first one drained instead of the main battery? I just can't comprehend.

The reality on batteries is that the are THE most consumable part of a machine so these things going bad should be expected. Also, it's generally more of an issue in that the vast majority of users have no idea on how to keep a battery in good shape (eg. not keep it on A/C all the time). I was looking through a few R51 batteries from an old stack of machine at our school when I came across one that was in the Red with less than 10wh left at 24 cycles!

I had picked up these USB Batteries cheap to see if I can find one or more that was resurrectable for a low price, so that's really not an issue. I was just curious if anyone had gotten into the innards of one of these things since I have a couple that could be a good match out of the batch of bad ones that I have.