Need battery- suggestions?

[mbarker]

The battery in my T42p is about toast....only lasts a few minutes. I see there are a zillion of them on e-Bay...... are any of them any better than others or are they all pretty much the same? Also, any e-Bay battery sellers to recommend?

Thanks.

[pjk]

I recently bought a genuine original, sealed brand-new 9-cell Lenovo battery for my T43, and paid around ~$40 for it including shipping. I'm happy as can be.

If you shop diligently, you can find deals like that. Use a search like this on ebay:

(IBM,Lenovo) (New,NIB,sealed,unused) (original,OEM,genuine) [part number - ie "92P1102" etc]

Set a min/max price range on the search. Then set that search to email you results periodically, and look for the best deals. I'd bet you'd find a good deal like the one I found within a week or two.

I'm leery of the 3rd-party batteries since these are not just cells in a case, there are also electronics there for monitoring battery status/life, etc, and given the recalls on even original batteries that had a tendency to catch on fire etc, I tend to avoid the cheapies.

Speaking of recalls, make sure you don't get one of the recalled ones that someone is pawning off:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ATT-LENOVO

[mbarker]

pjk, thank you very much for your reply. I was able to secure a OEM battery in short order, as well as learn a thing or two about e-bay searching!

I did not realize how with the right search that OEM batteries are actually fairly easy to find. There's so much clutter to wade through.

Anyway, I got an IBM/Panasonic 6 cell for $29 delivered. It is new with "Green" health, a cycle count of 1 and capacity of 51.83 Wh. I'm using/testing it right now.....have run 30 minutes and still have 80% remaining. I'm thrilled! Thanks again.

[pjk]

Awesome.. Yep it's one of the few purchases where you can have the satisfaction of seeing, right there in the battery-status page, that you are the first user to have ever charged that battery.

After suffering my share of fraudulent claims for used IT equipment I've bought over the years (ebay, craigslist and elsewhere), it's a nice contrast.

Enjoy.

[Ogg]

I was able to secure a OEM battery in short order..
Anyway, I got an IBM/Panasonic 6 cell for $29 delivered. It is new with "Green" health, a cycle count of 1 and capacity of 51.83 Wh. I'm using/testing it right now.....have run 30 minutes and still have 80% remaining. I'm thrilled! Thanks again.

What is the manufacture date of the battery?

I got a 3rd-party replacement battery for my T40 a couple of years ago and discovered that the "new" battery was already 12-months old. I got a 9-cell. It only lasted 2 years. I have now ordered a genuine 92P1102 direct from IBM. I'm assuming I'll get fresh stock.

[mbarker]

What is the manufacture date of the battery?

I got a 3rd-party replacement battery for my T40 a couple of years ago and discovered that the "new" battery was already 12-months old. I got a 9-cell. It only lasted 2 years. I have now ordered a genuine 92P1102 direct from IBM. I'm assuming I'll get fresh stock.

The manufacture date is 2006-10-27, but the First Use Date is 2011-03. It is what I expected..... 5yr old computer, 5yr old (NOS) battery.

Frankly, if it does well for 2 years I will be more than happy. They don't really last much more than that anyway. From my T42p's "Battery Tips:

[pjk]

I got a 3rd-party replacement battery for my T40 a couple of years ago and discovered that the "new" battery was already 12-months old. I got a 9-cell. It only lasted 2 years.

Well I don't know what your usage patterns are and I don't know exactly what your definition of "lasted" is, but I would be willing to bet that if you got substandard life from that battery, it had nothing to do with the battery's age (12 months on the shelf is nothing, really), and everything to do with the fact that it was a knockoff battery, not an original one.

Which is, once again, why I tend to avoid non-original laptop batteries.

[Ogg]

..but I would be willing to bet that if you got substandard life from that battery, it had nothing to do with the battery's age (12 months on the shelf is nothing, really), and everything to do with the fact that it was a knockoff battery, not an original one.

Which is, once again, why I tend to avoid non-original laptop batteries.

I don't think my usage was above standard. I'd use my laptop on battery power for about 1hr - 2hrs total for a day. Most of the time it would be plugged in during use. When the battery was "first used", it maintained a pretty consistent 4 to 4.5 hrs run-time the few times I used the battery just to test it. That didn't include turning off the disks or forcing the machine to sleep or hibernate when idle.

I would have thought that more consistent measure of quality would be the cycles. My battery only records 99 cycles to date (March 2009, to March 2011). 99 seems awfully low to me.

I paid about $70 (with shipping) for the non-IBM replacement battery. So, a $35/yr expense is still tolerable. Looking forward to receiving the genuine 92P1102 to compare the cycles and the years of usage that I can get out of it.

[Ogg]

The manufacture date is 2006-10-27, but the First Use Date is 2011-03. It is what I expected..... 5yr old computer, 5yr old (NOS) battery.

Frankly, if it does well for 2 years I will be more than happy. They don't really last much more than that anyway..

I wouldn't expect good performance from a battery that's been sitting on the shelf for 5 yrs. But keep us posted! Keep a note on the number of cycles you get out of it.

Interestingly, a friend of mine gave me an old iSeries 1300 Type-1171 Thinkpad. It still has the original IBM batteries and it can run for 3 hours on a charge. Originally installed with WinMe, but now runs W2K. I think there is a greater testament to "original" here.

[pjk]

For what it's worth: the original 6-cell battery that came with my T-43 is probably close to 5 years old now, and still holds a 2+ hour charge.

Which is one reason why I still don't think an unused battery sitting on the shelf for 5 years is necessarily doomed.

(I usually use the T43 plugged-in myself - probably 90/10 ratio of power-on-hours, so I guess I credit good battery-management from the ThinkVantage tools for not killing it off a lot quicker than that. Apparently a deep cycle takes more out of it than a well-managed continuous-powered situation does, on a powered-on-hour basis.)

[fefrie]

FWIW, you can get a t4X battery on dealextreme.com for about $35

[pjk]

FWIW, you can get a t4X battery on dealextreme.com for about $35

I just looked, and re: the batteries that they had for Thinkpad T4x:

A) Price started at ~$43
B) Were all non-original (non-IBM/Lenovo) products

Laptop batteries are not simple things like flashlight batteries. Among other things, they have embedded electronics which are responsible for battery-management and capacity-reporting, and since the power density is so high, a poorly-manufactured battery can subject you to dangerous situations like overheating, fire and even exploding. (Lenovo themselves had a recall over such things - I sincerely doubt most of the knockoff battery makers would even bother, since they're probably not certified by the major testing agencies anyway)

There are cheap non-original IBM/Lenovo batteries all over the place. But if you can get an original battery for under $40, why bother? (Apparently lithium-ion batteries do have a finite shelf-life, but I can't say I've witnessed any obvious problems myself so far.)

[RDKirk]

The best information on the internet about rechargeable batteries, information from a rechargeable battery expert who has no proprietary interest in any type or brand, is here:

batteryuniversity.com