Thinkpads Forum

hi

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to run a T60 without a battery installed, just from the charger?

I ask as my battery keeps getting over charged even though I set the power meter to stop at 80%. Sometimes for no reason it just keeps charging to 100%.

It says that to prolong battery life you should not fully charge to 100% if you mostly run on the charger, --- just as i do.

My battery was new IBM genuine only a year ago and already it's down to 50% capacity, so when I have to buy another I want to keep it out of the T60 until I need to work out of the house from the battery.

And I think it will work without the battery, just from the charger, but I am concerned that the charging system might need a battery or something to prevent it being damaged.

Any advice helpful

Thanks

You can run the laptop without a battery, from the charger.
This will not harm it in anyway.
What you should do then, is get a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), in which you plug the AC adapter.
If the electricity fails, at least you have enough time to save your work and switch off the laptop.
Without battery or UPS, and a power failure, you'd lose all your work.
Store the battery in a cool dark place, when not in use. In your part of the world, that's probably the fridge.

Ok thats great thanks for the help. yup your right if I dont have the aircon on it gets pretty warm around here.

Thanks again.

I always thought that without the battery, the CMOS battery would get drained faster. Am I wrong about that?

I don't really know about the CMOS battery, but I used my 770 for a couple of years without a battery with no problem. I always thought that the CMOS only had to provide power when the unit was powered off and there was no other source, whether that be battery or AC.

The CMOS battery only keeps the date/time and the BIOS settings when there is no mains or battery power.
Under normal circumstances a CMOS batt. is good for up to 5-6 years, sometimes even longer.

Thanks for the confirmation. So, if the OP carries around the laptop without the main battery, then the CMOS battery will last shorter. Certainly not a terrible thing, because these CMOS batts are cheap to replace.

The bigger problem of running a laptop without the main battery is that if you accidentally unplug the AC adapter, or if there is a brief power outage, the computer will turn off. I had a brief power outage just yesterday and I was so glad my i Series 1124 had a battery, so I didn't lose any data.

Aloha! RealBlackStuff has the Key here: A Full On UPS. The best is one that has quality AVR like an APC SmartUPS. That way you get automatic voltage regulation / line conditioning AND the backup battery. We use it on our SmartUPS 1500 and it doesn't even put a dent in the overall usage of the SmartUPS.

Since the battery that had come with our T61 was hosed, that's how we've used it with no problems at all.

EAkamai wrote:Aloha! RealBlackStuff has the Key here: A Full On UPS.

The UPS won't help in the event that you accidentally unplug the AC adapter from the laptop.

Personally, I would just use it the way it was intended, and not worry about the battery. Replacing the battery every so often (if you want long battery life) is part of the cost of owning a laptop. I've had more trouble keeping unused batteries healthy than ones that are used every day. If you let a Li-Ion battery completely discharge, it will never work again.

pianowizard wrote:The UPS won't help in the event that you accidentally unplug the AC adapter from the laptop.

We are 100% in agreement there. If the connection is loose and that has happened before guess i'd TAPE IT to make sure it didn't happen.

As I've been dedicating so much time in researching these Li-Ion batteries, I found Andy's comment most interesting...and disheartening. I keep waiting for someone to document that running down these expensive batteries will not ruin it. But it appears I'm waiting in vain.
Perhaps what Andy says is really the only way to consider this. It makes me think getting another new/additional battery to complement our recently purchased [Panasonic] one may just be a waste of $$. I guess only in the instance where we will be needing to swap it out due to lack of AC availability would it make some kind of sense (as Bill pointed out). But Andy's comment "I've had more trouble keeping unused batteries healthy than ones that are used every day." is pretty concerning. As with our ONLY experience with a Li-Ion battery it was just the opposite. It was *always* in the system but barely used off of the grid (AC). But since I knew nothing about the inherent nature of the Li-Ion 'beast' who knows if it would have lasted any longer if it had been stored outside the laptop?! I DO know I am not in any hurry to get another Sony battery to find that out.

I did plan to store the new one outside until i need it in a few months for the road. But now Andy has me re-thinking this idea yet again. YIKES. This is starting to make me feel like the southern end of a northern malamute!

The main thing to watch for with long term storage of batteries is not to let them get completely discharged. Once the cells go below a certain voltage, the battery controller will shut down and never allow the battery to be charged. I don't recommend this, but I have revived over discharged batteries by opening them up and manually charging them up to enough voltage so that the controller will allow them to be charged.

Storage for a few months shouldn't be a problem, but a year or more can be, particularly if it was put away discharged. The best thing for batteries seems to be normal use. Don't use it on AC 100% of the time, and don't run it down completely every day.

andy2000 wrote:Storage for a few months shouldn't be a problem, but a year or more can be, particularly if it was put away discharged. The best thing for batteries seems to be normal use. Don't use it on AC 100% of the time, and don't run it down completely every day.

Thanks Andy!

andy2000 wrote:Personally, I would just use it the way it was intended, and not worry about the battery. Replacing the battery every so often (if you want long battery life) is part of the cost of owning a laptop. I've had more trouble keeping unused batteries healthy than ones that are used every day. If you let a Li-Ion battery completely discharge, it will never work again.

amen

Pay attention to one more fact: if you run without battery on the 65W power supply, the CPU will be locked to minimum speed.

dr_st wrote:Pay attention to one more fact: if you run without battery on the 65W power supply, the CPU will be locked to minimum speed.

Aloha! Do you have any documentation on this? I don't notice any slow downs at all... but then what I do may not make that evident.

Thanks dr!

EAkamai wrote:Aloha! Do you have any documentation on this?

Try it. Use a 65W PSU, take the battery out, run a task that gets CPU to 100% (e.g., Super PI) and monitor the speed with CPUZ. Then put the battery in and try again.

I keep a file called C:\1.BAT that just runs itself with no echo (@1) just for tests like that.

dr_st wrote:Try it. Use a 65W PSU, take the battery out, run a task that gets CPU to 100% (e.g., Super PI) and monitor the speed with CPUZ. Then put the battery in and try again.

Wow, guess I'll be looking for a 90W adapter. Always wanted the one where you could run it from the car also (AC/DC?). Now I just need to find which one and where to get it.

Thanks for the info.

dr_st wrote:Pay attention to one more fact: if you run without battery on the 65W power supply, the CPU will be locked to minimum speed.

Howdy dr! We're getting this 90W AC/DC model: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4262
will this be ok and allow the CPU to "fly free" without the battery?! Would like to confirm before actually getting it.

How does the higher wattage adapter matter (as most say you can easily run a fully loaded Integrated graphics T6x with the 65W adapter) and how does the system 'know' which is attached? I find that very interesting.

Thanks for your help!

I have never owned the combined AC/DC adapter, but I do know (and just checked) that the normal 90W adapter does allow you to run at maximum speed even without a battery installed, whereas the 65W does not.

It is just another safety measure Lenovo incorporated - to avoid overstressing the power supply. With a battery installed, the laptop can pull some juice out of it, in theoretical cases where the adapter won't be enough. It's a pity that they don't give the user a way to bypass this measure.

There is a handshake process between the system and the power supply (on the fundamental level, the system has to know it is attached at all to reroute the power.) It's not that difficult to pass some code identifying the exact type of power supply as part of this handshake process.

I can confirm that on my T60 1951-4MU that running the computer without the battery will make the CPU fixed at 998 MHz using a 65W power supply.

I do not have a 90W power supply so I can't comment on the rest

manteiv wrote:I can confirm that on my T60 1951-4MU that running the computer without the battery will make the CPU fixed at 998 MHz using a 65W power supply.

Aloha manteiv! Could you relate your method of confirming this? Meanwhile I'll look into dr_st's info.

Thanks

RealBlackStuff wrote:You can run the laptop without a battery, from the charger.
This will not harm it in anyway.
What you should do then, is get a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), in which you plug the AC adapter.
If the electricity fails, at least you have enough time to save your work and switch off the laptop.
Without battery or UPS, and a power failure, you'd lose all your work.
Store the battery in a cool dark place, when not in use. In your part of the world, that's probably the fridge.

I don't have a UPS, but IIRC it hasn't bitten me yet. I tend to save me work as a precaution to whatever. I've been running my T60 for almost 4 years on the adapter and the battery has been in the refrigerator the whole time except for the occasional time I go mobile. I reduce the charge on it to ~40%, wrap in plastic and into the fridge it goes. I let it warm, increase the charge to over 80% when I want to go mobile. On a day to day basis, the T60 stays connected to the adapter. It's configured to suspend when the cover is closed, awaken when the cover is opened. Never had a problem.

andy2000 wrote:The main thing to watch for with long term storage of batteries is not to let them get completely discharged. Once the cells go below a certain voltage, the battery controller will shut down and never allow the battery to be charged. I don't recommend this, but I have revived over discharged batteries by opening them up and manually charging them up to enough voltage so that the controller will allow them to be charged.

Storage for a few months shouldn't be a problem, but a year or more can be, particularly if it was put away discharged. The best thing for batteries seems to be normal use. Don't use it on AC 100% of the time, and don't run it down completely every day.

I'm just searching the forums to see if anyone else has had the same problem as I have - and it seems not.

I like my T60 so much that I have a complete spare, similarly-specced laptop - including battery. I hadn't run the spare for over six months so I thought I should. Normally I run it for a day or so every three months as it can get humid here. Anyway, I plugged it into an adapter and started it up.

The battery LED started off solid orange for maybe 10 minutes, then went to flashing orange. When I hovered the pointer over the battery icon near the systray it said that the battery had failed and I should get a new one. However it showed as being 80% charged! I disconnected the PSU and left the machine running on the battery, playing an AVI in a loop.

It ran for over two hours on this 'failed' battery before shutting down. It didn't get unduly hot and nothing untoward hgappened. Now it won't take a charge - in that machine or this. Previous to that happening I'd used it on that battery from time-to-time and it seemed absolutely fine. I get a horrible feeling that I'm subject to 'built-in obsolescence', that the software has decided that, as the battery is X years old and has done Y cycles I should give Lenovo some money.

If it had indeed failed then how come it could run the laptop for over two hours?

To the best of my knowledge it is still moot whether it's:

* Something really failing in the battery circuitry which shuts it down and the software just reports it
* Something (possibly harmless) in the battery causing the software to trigger something "fatal" in the battery which causes it to shut down completely

I haven't seen conclusive evidence of either option.

What I do know is that there is no rigid indicator, such as battery age, or number of cycles, that causes it. Because it happens to different batteries at different points in time and use. I still have 4 T60 batteries here, at least 3 of which are in semi-regular use, all are 5+ years old, with hundreds of cycles and none has failed in this manner.

Neil wrote:I don't really know about the CMOS battery, but I used my 770 for a couple of years without a battery with no problem. I always thought that the CMOS only had to provide power when the unit was powered off and there was no other source, whether that be battery or AC.

I've been running my T60 since I bought it Dec. 2006 99.8% of the time without a battery and still have not had to replace the CMOS battery. 95+% of the time it's attached to the charger and in suspend. Its battery is in pretty good shape (I think over 80% capacity) and most of the time it sits in my refrigerator in a plastic bag. I use the battery only occasionally.
- - - -
"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." -- Rumi, Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula

dr_st wrote:To the best of my knowledge it is still moot whether it's:

* Something really failing in the battery circuitry which shuts it down and the software just reports it
* Something (possibly harmless) in the battery causing the software to trigger something "fatal" in the battery which causes it to shut down completely

I haven't seen conclusive evidence of either option.

What I do know is that there is no rigid indicator, such as battery age, or number of cycles, that causes it. Because it happens to different batteries at different points in time and use. I still have 4 T60 batteries here, at least 3 of which are in semi-regular use, all are 5+ years old, with hundreds of cycles and none has failed in this manner.

I have no idea of what caused it in this case - all I know is that, previous to the 'failure' it had been absolutely fine, running at ~85% capacity for a couple years, maybe cycled 5 times. I wish I could reverse the 'marked as bad' process as, as mentioned, it run fine for over two hours after the software said it had 'failed'. Despite my plethora of ThinkPads I'm destitute - they're my only vice, seriously - and a bunch of them will likely have to go soon. So I won't be getting a replacement battery.

I have a small drawer full of X31/X32 batteries, a couple as good as 90%, some at better than 50% and half at 25 - 40%. All but one have dates that show they were OEM and most have a boatload of cycles clocked up. Despite that they seem good. My biggest problem is getting around to cycling them all every so often.

Cheers,