Safe to purchase OEM battery off eBay?

[Broohaha]

The battery on my thinkpad x60 seems to have died. The computer runs when the ac adapter is plugged in but when I take the plug out, it turns off, even with the battery in there. Doesnt seem like the battery is carrying a charge anymore. I bought it used about a month ago and I guess the battery ran out of juice.

I see that there are plenty available on ebay. Some are much more expensive than others though. I imagine the more expensive ones are authentic IBM-branded ones while the less expensive ones are knockoffs/OEM items manufactured by third parties in East Asia.

Slickdeals.net link

Will a $45 OEM battery will do the trick? Or will it not hold the charge as well and/or die out quicker?

Can anybody suggest the best place to buy a replacement battery? Obviously, price is of the essence so I'd like it as cheap as possible but I also dont want something that will die in 1 month.

Just a note: I checked to see if my battery was effected by the recall and unfortunately it was not.

Moderator edit: Shortened URL to link to prevent horizontal scrolling

[pianowizard]

If you still have warranty for the X60, Lenovo will replace it for free. The same thing happened to my X60s.

[Broohaha]

awesome, im pretty sure my warranty is still active. i will contact them and hopefully get a replacement. the weird thing is that there wasnt any sort of warning that the battery was dying. just one day the battery diagram on the taskbar said "error" instead of showing a percentage. before i knew it, battery was dead.

[pianowizard]

just one day the battery diagram on the taskbar said "error" instead of showing a percentage.

Yep, I had the exact same "error". Lenovo replaced it for free, no question asked.

[Broohaha]

well, of course, my machine is still under warranty but they say my battery warranty ran out 3 weeks ago.

so the original question still stands: where can i get a good replacement battery?

[Broohaha]

anybody?

[rkawakami]

I've only dealt with two sources of batteries (used or refurbished):

eBay (T2x series)
batteryrefill.com (600-series)

I'd stick with genuine IBM batteries and not ones labelled "Replacement for" or "Made for". You can also Google/Yahoo! the battery FRU to find other on-line sellers.

[Tholek]

Yeah, batteries are the one thing I wouldn't like to go generic on. Toner and print cartridges are less risky, although still so.

[slackie]

I own a x60 with the C2D T7200 CPU. It was shipped with the 4-cell battery and it won't power for more than approx 1,5 hours using wifi.

Are the OEM batteries sold via eBay still risky to use? Has anyone tried using an OEM battery?

Also, I was wondering if it's possible to use the "8-cell" and the "extended" batteries simultaneously?

[SHoTTa35]

OEM batteries are from IBM and designed to work with your IBM Thinkpad x60. They are as risky as brushing your teeth (no worries)

You can use 1 battery in the system at a time unless you slide one in the DVD-RW drive bay which is called the UltraBay Battery. That would give you a combo of like 10hrs or so.

[awolfe63]

I've had pretty good luck with ebay batteries - but thinkpad batteries get old fast. It is a mistake to buy a battery that is more than a few months old. Sometimes they are fine - but sometimes you lose 20-30% in the first year just die to age. I never know how old the stock is on ebay.

I just bought a battery from freshbattery.com. As promised - it was fresh - but they don't carry x60 yet.