My Dream Thinkpad T23 Battery

[fefrie]

Call me crazy, but I really don't need a 3 hour battery. In fact, I have a 3 hour li-ion battery for my t23, but it stays in a dust cupboard most of the time and I use my '40 minute' battery. I'm pretty well conditioned to used my power source.

Of course the 40 minute battery used to last longer, but the limited charge is fine for the 15-20 minutes I rarely run the laptop without the power source.

My question, is that is there such thing as a lighter less capacity battery. I'm guessing that the battery typically would be a 6 cell battery. 2 cell parallel sets running in a 3 set series configuration. or better yet a 3 cell parallel sets running in a 2 set series configuration.

That way you could design a battery with only 2 or 3 cell configuration with an approximat run time of maybe 30-40 minutes. Not long enough for a transcontinental flight, which doesn't matter since I have a battery for that already, but the 300-400 gram reduction would put me into that x40-like lightness.

I used to run around without a battery, and it did make the carry bag much lighter, but it was a pain in the [censored] when someone would unplug me by accident.

It's a crazy idea, but I'm such a minimalist.

That's why I'm an IBM person I guess.

[WarMachine]

Hi !

When my first battery died, I opened it, to pull out the cells. Now, I use the plastic like a cache.

Well, It's not recommanded to open a battery, but...

On the other hand, I won't be able to confirm you the existence of a light battery for your laptop.

Let's wait for the other posters.

W.

[fefrie]

Yeah, I've done that to previous laptops, most notably my 390x.

It was good because without a battery, the "battery" charging light will never come on. And even though you may not use a battery, it's a handy indicator to let you know if there is power coming through the power source.

The bad thing of course in pulling out the cells and putting the empty case back in is that there is no possibility of putting the laptop into standby mode.

Once this 40 minute battery becomes a 10 minute battery, I may rip it open and see if I can surgically rip out any cells that are in a parallel configuration, but I won't do that for awhile. It's pretty tight in there anyways.

I may contact one of the rebuilding companies such as batteryrefill.com or any other company that others have had success with and see what they can do.

[rkawakami]

With the voltage of the Li-Ion cells at 3.6v or so, you would need at least three of them to power the laptop. What the charging circuitry inside the laptop AND the battery would do if it only saw three cells instead of the usual six, is unknown.

[fefrie]

Thanks for the help.

I've just emailed something to batteryrefill.com asking the same sort of question, so I'll post when I get an answer.

Thanks

[Xenomorph]

off topic, but is there a site that tells you how to open the battery on your thinkpad?

i have an older one, i dont recall the model right now. its a mmx233 system, but with built in stereo speakers, cd, and floppy. very bulky.

the battery is shot and holds no charge. however, when it is plugged in, it makes a high pitch sound, and gets really hot.

right now, i have paper shoved into the connectors to prevent a connection from being made. i was going to eventually dig the metal out with a screw driver for permanent protection.

it would be nicer though to hollow the battery out to make it lighter.

[BruisedQuasar]

I've just emailed something to batteryrefill.com. I'll post when I get an answer.

I was going to recommend you ask batteryrefill.com your query. Please post their reply. I would like to know what they say. I suspect they can load significantly lower mAh cells that would give you only the time you want but I think they are going to say the weight savings will be uninteresting.

My mother-in-law's 6 year old Dell notebook battery is down to 30 minutes per charge. She is happy with it as she needs only ten minutes or so--just long enough to save and shut down during a power outage or in case someone accidently shuts her down. The weight doesn't concern her as she doesn't move hers out of the house. I don't either. I use NEC MobilePros (1.7 lbs, 8-10hour battery) for out of the house use.

--Bruised