x61s battery *PICS*

[Nepyk]

Hey Everyone,

I am newbie here!
I have bought my first x61s several days ago during old IT stuff auction which was held at my working place. I have paid EUR 60 for it. It seems a bargain. My x61s has:
CPU: 1,6 GHz (L7500);
RAM: 2GB;
HDD: 100GB;

Basically I have two questions:
1. Battery is totally dead. It shows 2% and is not charging at all (then cord is unplugged everything switch off), so I need a new battery. Can some suggest which battery to buy. I found some cheap Chinese stuff, OEM and genuine battery. I am not willing to speed much on the battery so genuine battery is not for me. My budget will be approx. 30-40 USD. Can some share its experience what to choose in this price range or I need to invest more? Battery FRU 93P5030
2. I hope that my new purchase will be a great project. I will to make it - portable home computer which will be connected to external monitor (possible held in dock) and used for browsing and movies (however, not hoping to watch HD ). I am thinning about upgrade. What would you suggest to upgrade first:
a) HDD to SDD;
b) Install additional RAM;
c) or should I change my CPU;
d) other?

Thanks in advance for for comments and suggestions!

P.S. is it normal that x61s body is quite warm and it is quite noise (you can quite clearly hear the fan). Maybe I should check and if necessary clean its inside?

[precip9]

Cheap Chinese batteries work good.

The OEM battery used Samsung cells, which are not great, so no advantage over Chinese cells, which are not great.

OEM batteries have stories of faulty firmware that make battery suddenly nonfunctional.

Chinese battery may go dead, but then you've lost only twenty bucks.

OEM batteries have more capacity when new, but new Chinese battery will have more capacity than OEM battery that has sat on shelf.

Personally, I have 20+ Chinese batteries. Only one failure, my fault, it was left on shelf +year to discharge below 0%, which breaks keep-alive circuit.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Batteries for the X60/X61 series come in two different styles: 4 cell and 8 cell. From what I can tell, the 93P5030 is an 8-cell version. This means it sticks out the back side of the laptop. If you plan on using the X61s in the Ultrabase, then you need to be careful when selecting an 8-cell battery. The factory ones will always fit; most of the "aftermarket" or non-genuine packs cannot be used with an Ultrabase. It has to do with the physical size of the battery. See here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 56#p746756 If you have access to eBay and can find a local (i.e., European) seller or one who is willing to ship overseas, then that is a good source. Same goes for the members here at this forum. Many/most of the eBay sellers will either not list in their description, or cannot tell you the battery details that can be found by checking with Power Manager (current capacity in Wh, number of cycles, date first used, etc.). I have been able to find what's called NOS (New, Old Stock) batteries on eBay for around $25USD from time to time. They were either still sealed in factory cartons with the clear/red tape or were verified as being new (or near new) by checking the number of charge cycles and the date the battery was first used.

Upgrading to an SSD should make the system perform a little bit faster but then you have to consider the extra cost (usually) over a regular HDD. If money is a concern, I would opt to increase the memory to at least 3GB; 4GB if you have an OS that can support it. You can't change the CPU; it's soldered onto the motherboard. The only thing that you could do is swap out the motherboard that has an L7700 but I don't think it's cost effective.

ref: Use the following eBay search: 40Y7003 (original,genuine,factory,oem)
ref: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012165 Thinkpad batteries and chargers reference guide

[precip9]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Batteries for the X60/X61 series come in two different styles: 4 cell and 8 cell. From what I can tell, the 93P5030 is an 8-cell version. This means it sticks out the back side of the laptop. If you plan on using the X61s in the Ultrabase, then you need to be careful when selecting an 8-cell battery. The factory ones will always fit; most of the "aftermarket" or non-genuine packs cannot be used with an Ultrabase.

Ray, the above applies to the X61 tablet, not the X61s. Of the more than a dozen aftermarket batteries I have around here for my X61s's, not a single one interferes with the Ultrabase.

The Ultrabase issue with the tablet came about because the OEM batteries use prismatic (not-round) cells to increase packing density. The aftermarket makers, not having access to prismatic cells, invented new shapes for the battery housing to fit similar capacity. There are two variants.

1. One housing has two rectangular bubbles on the bottom, that holds extra cells. This type of tablet battery does not fit the ultrabase.
2. The other type of tablet battery extends the battery way out the back of the unit. This fits on the tablet ultrabase. It increases the depth (front-to-back) of the tablet by about an inch, making it difficult for the ensemble to fit into many laptop cases.

None of the above is second-hand. I have two tablets, three X61s, and multiples of all the types of batteries discussed above.

[rkawakami]

What I said about some aftermarket 8-cell X60/61 batteries not fitting when attempting to attach to the Ultrabase, is with the non-tablet systems; the only type of X6 Thinkpads I have. I do have one knockoff type that does work but my experience is that is the exception rather than the rule. Here's a better photo showing the difference between the two:

<--- click for 1024x768 image

Since the aftermarket cells at the back end do not extend as far as the genuine pack (what the diagonal arrows are pointing to), that part of the extended battery pack does not fit into the matching well in the Ultrabase:

<--- click for 1024x768 image
<--- click for 1024x768 image

[precip9]

How odd!

I just checked my three X61s's, two of which are stored attached to Ultrabases. I also dug into the pile in the bottom of the refrigerator for the top three.

All of these aftermarket batteries conform to your picture of an OEM battery, as much as any "sloppy copy" can.

All the batteries were bought off eBay, and none were selected with knowledge of the problem. My method of selection was:

1. Price
2. Buyer satisfaction above 98.5%.
Some of the batteries came from North Brunswick, NJ, others Brooklyn, and others Philadelphia, and a very few from LA. I get the impression the above may be connected through a buyer's consortium.

[Nepyk]

40Y7003

Thank You for nice overall introduction.
I am not sure which battery to choose, i.e. 8 or 4 cells. I am not planning to travel with my x61s somewhere for whole day w/o power source. So if 4 cells could give me 2-3 hours of work, it would be fine for me. However, extra time would be a great benefit. Confessed !

Thanks for new reference on battery no, it really helped with my search! I found several batteries:
1. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Battery ... 3cace3fcf2 - Seems genuine, however cost is quite hight.
2. http://www.ebay.com/itm/AKKU-4400mAh-er ... 565d9ad18e - cheaper aftermarket 8 cell battery
3. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Genuine- ... 15322.html this one seems very cheap but I doubt if it is original (possible it won't fit into ultrabase)

What do You think?

[rkawakami]

1) Battery is a genuine Lenovo 4-cell version. The price is high for a 4-cell but that's to be expected with some factory batteries.
2) I can't tell from the provided pictures in that auction to say if that 8-cell will work with an Ultrabase.
3) As far as I can tell it is a factory 8-cell so it will work with the Ultrabase. Label has "lenovo" logo, the red circle 22++, the bar code and serial number, along with all of the other standard markings.

@precip9: I took a look at the eBay listings for "battery x60 (lenovo,thinkpad,ibm) -cmos -spacer -charger -adapter -tablet". By looking at just the 8-cell versions and the included photos, I could only find one listing that appears to be questionable when it comes to working with the Ultrabase: http://www.ebay.com/itm/281144601064 Zoom in on the third and fourth photos and look here:

<--- click for 640x480 image

There were several batteries that I could not make a determination as they did not have a good image of that part of the pack. All of the others, the vast majority, appear to be compatible with the Ultrabase as they have the shape of the original factory 8-cell packs. I will admit that my bias for saying that most aftermarket X6 batteries don't fit with the Ultrabase goes back many years. In 2011, I posted this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 08#p639108 Even as recent as 2013, I ran into a slight problem with another non-OEM 8-cell: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 46#p703946 Up until 2012 or so, there were eBay listings for X6 8-cell batteries that indicated that they would not work with the "docking station". It's what led me to ignore all aftermarket X6 batteries and only go after the factory batteries. It appears since then, the aftermarket designers were finally able to duplicate the physical dimensions of the factory battery.