Battery question

[admsteiner]

Hey,

Had something happen with me today. Apparently my laptop never went into hibernate. When I turned it on the battery was at 1%. When it charged up, it would only go to 33Whr (about 2/3 the regular 6 cell) and the battery life turned yellow.

Something similar happend with my 9 cell and thinking it defective, I returned it to IBM. If I run a battery recondition, will I get back the last 13Whr (or close to it) or is the battery finished already?

Thanks,
Adam

[lfeagan]

Ew, sounds ugly. I am not a chemical engineer, but from the sounds of it you shot your battery. Reconditioning can only do so much unless you strip a battery down to individual cells and have a specialized reconditioning computer that can tweak the cells internal chemistry very carefully. In general when you have a pack really reconditioning it very much just isn't going to be particularly effective as each cell is at a different place in recovering its overall chemistry and so the changes a reconditioner would make would only be right for the average of the cells in the pack, not each individual cell.

I do think you might recover some of that back, but I certainly wouldn't expect any miracles.

Out of curiousity, what on earth happenend? Did it get heated up or something and start melting down? I don't understand the significance of the "my laptop never went into hibernate" as this alone shouldn't cause a battery to go bad.

[admsteiner]

Out of curiousity, what on earth happenend? Did it get heated up or something and start melting down? I don't understand the significance of the "my laptop never went into hibernate" as this alone shouldn't cause a battery to go bad.

My laptop is set to go into hibernate when I close the cover. I was leaving the library after doing some school work (battery was then at 100%) and unplugged the computer and closed the cover.

I assumed (or at least I think I would have noticed) had it not gone into hibernate.

Went to the train station (Penn Station for those really interested), got on the train home (LIRR), opened up the computer and pow, only 1% left. That's another strange part. Between the unplugging of my laptop in school and turning it on in the train couldn't have been more than an hour. Even at full brightness with a DVD playing I should have had 10-15% of the battery left.

As I mentioned, something similar happend with my 9 cell recently and I called IBM to replace it. This battery (the 6) has 15 cycles on it, and I think I'll call IBM up also.

I'm wondering if there might actually be something wrong with the laptop, but I'd be surprised if that was the case.

--Adam

[lfeagan]

Egads, I really hope that there aren't weird battery issues as I just got the same notebook as you. It is possible that the charging circuit has gone awry and that is what is causing you the problems you are experiencing. If you had a logging multimeter, you might even decide to dig into it and monitor the voltage it is putting across the cells. This is honestly a scary thing if the battery charging circuit is on the fritz as it could cause the cells to melt down or worse yet catch on fire/explode.

I am really interested in hearing what the guys from IBM think after this has now happened twice to you. Certainly the probabilties make it seem like the notebook charger might be the issue, and not the batteries.

[admsteiner]

Il'll probably be giving IBM a call today or tomorrow. I find it interesteing that in both cases the battery would only charge to 2/3 capacity (seemingly 6 of the 9 cells and 4 of the 6 cells).


No logging multimeter here and I have no time to monitor the voltages . I'm curious why that would cause it to go down to 2/3s though, I'll post an update after I speak with IBM.

--Adam

[admsteiner]

Spoke with IBM, they're sending me a new 6 cell to replace my damaged one. If it happens again we'll try the AC Adapter...

-adam