Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I recently purchased a T60 with a 9-cell battery (the large battery that sticks out at the back of the laptop). The problem is that this battery does not have a tight fit, and jiggles quite a bit (i.e., it moves back and forth, and right and left for about 3-4 mm). This is, obviously, annoying because I've never experienced this with my older ThinkPads (even with larger capacity batteries).

I searched this forum, and found that this is a common problem experienced by many users. Is this supposed to be this way (i.e., by design)? Does anyone who has a tight fit with this 9-cell battery (no move)?

I am trying to determine whether this is something I should send this laptop for inspection/repair. I would appreciate your advice.

Thanks.

There are two different battery MFGs that make these. No matter what anyone says, they both jiggle, I know and tried both in both my T43p and now T60p and they both jiggle. Apply black electrical tape to the battery surfaces that hides under the laptop when inserted and it will stop. Try the fit after each piece until snug. Mine is tight and does not move.

Panasonic and Sanyo both make 9-cell batteries for the T60/p. Greg is right - they both have play. The Panasonic seems to fit slightly better than the Sanyo.

Sony makes a 6-cell battery for the T60/p and it fits perfect. I haven't seen a Panasonic or Sanyo 6-cell battery yet.

I have a Sanyo 6cell in my t60 and it has slight play in it.

The 6 cell from panasonic on my T42 is nice and tight...

Greg Gebhardt wrote:There are two different battery MFGs that make these. No matter what anyone says, they both jiggle, I know and tried both in both my T43p and now T60p and they both jiggle. Apply black electrical tape to the battery surfaces that hides under the laptop when inserted and it will stop. Try the fit after each piece until snug. Mine is tight and does not move.

A number of people dispute that (Sanyo jiggles, other brands do not). I've got Sanyo and it jiggles, I've requested a non-Sanyo replacement so, we'll see...

Hi Guys,

Thank you for all your comments and feedback. Deducing from your comments, it appears it is safe to conclude that "some jiggles from the 9-cell battery are NOT avoidable."

I have a Panasonic 9-cell, and, according to the posts, a replacement is not likely to solve the problem. I guess this is another DIS-improvement that Lenovo made to ThinkPads. I've been using 8-10 ThinkPads since 1992, and all the batteries fit tightly as if they were screwed to the computer. It is a shame that the built quality is going downhill...

Thank you.

drblue wrote:Hi Guys,

Thank you for all your comments and feedback. Deducing from your comments, it appears it is safe to conclude that "some jiggles from the 9-cell battery are NOT avoidable."

I have a Panasonic 9-cell, and, according to the posts, a replacement is not likely to solve the problem. I guess this is another DIS-improvement that Lenovo made to ThinkPads. I've been using 8-10 ThinkPads since 1992, and all the batteries fit tightly as if they were screwed to the computer. It is a shame that the built quality is going downhill...

Thank you.

I would like to point out that the T4X Series have had this "jigginling" problem for some time now; for me, however, one battery I tried, which I think was a Panasonic, fit pretty snug. This isn't something new.

RonS wrote:Sony makes a 6-cell battery for the T60/p and it fits perfect. I haven't seen a Panasonic or Sanyo 6-cell battery yet.

I have a Panasonic 6-cell and it jiggles. It has about 1mm up/down play and about the same in/out. Time to get some tape...

Apply 6-12 layers of wide scotch tape over the printed label -- enough to make it hard to slide in -- and that will take care of it. Electrical tape may accomplish the same thing but it compresses more and since it's thicker you might not be able to hit the perfect thickness.

I think this is a tradeoff of the side-in battery design (along with loosing a bunch of port space). I do think that the geniuses that design these things could have come up with a design that is both easy to insert and snug when installed.

While I'm making my wish list, they could have made a battery with integrated serial, parallel and SVideo ports. I hope someone is listening.

-darren

darrenf wrote: While I'm making my wish list, they could have made a battery with integrated serial, parallel and SVideo ports. I hope someone is listening.

-darren

I think somebody is listening, for I can hear far off sounds of many engineers moaning, quite loudly, at such prospects of a more complicated battery and worrying about heating and how they can convince Sanyo and Panasonic to go along with it; or maybe those sounds are from the rest of the people that are recovering from hangovers after the Post-Finals Parties...It gets very hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Hi all,

Thank you for your comments. I guess I will also have to resort to 3M magic tapes.

I just put some NITTO electrical tape on my 6-cell Panasonic. There was only about 1mm of movement, but it was in/out and up/down as well -- so it made sense to me to put it on the curved surface, rather than on the label, so I could stop movement in both directions with the one piece of tape. I used about 4 layers and applied the strips at either end of the battery.

Another question this raises is what it does to the heat load? There is now a distinct 1mm gap between the battery and the chassis, so presumably the chassis is not going to get as hot now... Is this gonna make a difference to my fan speed?

astro wrote:I just put some NITTO electrical tape on my 6-cell Panasonic. There was only about 1mm of movement, but it was in/out and up/down as well -- so it made sense to me to put it on the curved surface, rather than on the label, so I could stop movement in both directions with the one piece of tape. I used about 4 layers and applied the strips at either end of the battery.

Another question this raises is what it does to the heat load? There is now a distinct 1mm gap between the battery and the chassis, so presumably the chassis is not going to get as hot now... Is this gonna make a difference to my fan speed?

It isn't going to make that much of a dent in the temperature and definitely not the fan speed.

Another question this raises is what it does to the heat load? There is now a distinct 1mm gap between the battery and the chassis, so presumably the chassis is not going to get as hot now... Is this gonna make a difference to my fan speed?

I don't think this will make any difference in the fan speed because, if my understanding is correct, the fan speed is governed by the hottest component, and the hottest component is not likely to be the battery, but the GPU (my ongoing problem).

I may be wrong, but this is my conclusion so far.

I use strips of adhesive backed weatherstripping foam. It solved the problem on my T43p and on my T60p.

Scratch wrote:I use strips of adhesive backed weatherstripping foam. It solved the problem on my T43p and on my T60p.

I'd like to see some pictures of that, if possible. Sounds interesting.

I haven't posted images here before, but I'll give it a shot (no pun intended) over the coming weekend.

I use strips of adhesive backed weatherstripping foam. It solved the problem on my T43p and on my T60p.

I would be careful with using padded or thick tapes. I have a colleague who have been using a piece of padded tape to solve his loose battery. He told me that using a thick piece of tape "permanently" stretched the existing gap between the laptop and the battery. Thus, while using a thick/padded tape may give you a tighter fit, it might ultimately make the problem worse. Just a head up.

I guess the trick is to apply just the "right" amount of tapes.

Greg Gebhardt wrote:There are two different battery MFGs that make these. No matter what anyone says, they both jiggle, I know and tried both in both my T43p and now T60p and they both jiggle. Apply black electrical tape to the battery surfaces that hides under the laptop when inserted and it will stop. Try the fit after each piece until snug. Mine is tight and does not move.

A fine solution, BUT. For the amount of money we pay for the pleasure and honor of using a Thinkpad, you'd think the battery latches would be perfectly tight. This is not rocket science, it's build quality. This whole keyboard question - NMB vs Chicony vs ALPS also seems nuts, in a way. All these different vendors make your Thinkpad purchase feel like a crapshoot. Whatever happened to consistency?!