Thinkpads Forum

I apologize for remaking my earlier thread, but I've shifted the direction of my inquiry. I'll provide a brief background first:

I own an X60s, with the regular (and original) 8 cell battery. When I first got it battery life was fantastic, and stayed as such for quite a while. About a month ago I noticed when used on battery power the laptop would only use about 30% of its actual capacity, going from 100% down to about 70% steadily then suddenly dropping down to 0. Now the battery holds no charge whatsoever, as soon as I unplug from the AC adapter the laptop goes dead.

My question then, is this: Have the cells in the battery been steadily failing (would be kind of surprised, since I'm fairly certain this is the OEM battery), or is something wrong the charging/power circuitry on the system board itself?

->In short; new battery, or new laptop?

What you've described is a typical symptom when one or more cells in a battery are weak or dead.

Harryc wrote:What you've described is a typical symptom when one or more cells in a battery are weak or dead.

Well that's a relief, thanks Harry. It really only takes a couple dead cells to break the circuit in the whole battery?

That is correct.

Harryc wrote:That is correct.

Alright, thanks for the quick responses. Off to ebay I go.

Interesting post. I was fortunate to get my X60s for a VERY low price because the previous owner thought the X60s had gone bad when it was only a dead battery. Lucky me.

Well, if you look around the forum, you'll notice a lot of topics covering x60 and x60s with bad batteries. Apparently, there was a recall back in August 2009, and most of the batteries had some sort of an error (Sony cells to be precise). My 8-cell battery went bad about a month ago, almost at the same time I bought my x60s used. Luckily, previous owner and I came to an agreement

John H wrote:Interesting post. I was fortunate to get my X60s for a VERY low price because the previous owner thought the X60s had gone bad when it was only a dead battery. Lucky me.

Heh, that might have been me had it not been for this wonderful forum. Glad you were able to gain from it though.

jimmy274 wrote:Well, if you look around the forum, you'll notice a lot of topics covering x60 and x60s with bad batteries. Apparently, there was a recall back in August 2009, and most of the batteries had some sort of an error (Sony cells to be precise). My 8-cell battery went bad about a month ago, almost at the same time I bought my x60s used. Luckily, previous owner and I came to an agreement

Good to know, to be honest I was kind of ignorant of the search feature in posting this. Mine definitely has Sony cells, and I'm pretty sure would have been part of this recall.

Glad you were able to work it out though, mine kicked around too long for me to try and talk with the seller.

The x60 is the only ThinkPad I have owned that would not boot without a good battery. Take the battery out...it appears to be dead. Put a dead (defective) battery in...still no start.

But...when you put in a good battery it works fine.

For the sake of closure, I bought a new battery off ebay and that solved all my issues. Don't seem to get as much juice out of the new one, but I have yet to really figure out the power management in linux.

thanks all

John H wrote:I was fortunate to get my X60s for a VERY low price because the previous owner thought the X60s had gone bad when it was only a dead battery. Lucky me.

Same here. I got my X61 for cheap because the previous owner thought the laptop wasn't charging the battery anymore...

Of course, a $40 ebay battery was all it needed.

It's not every day you come across a X61 with a T8300 in it! I almost felt a little guilty about the deal but whatever, his loss was my gain.

jimmy274 wrote:Well, if you look around the forum, you'll notice a lot of topics covering x60 and x60s with bad batteries. Apparently, there was a recall back in August 2009, and most of the batteries had some sort of an error (Sony cells to be precise). My 8-cell battery went bad about a month ago, almost at the same time I bought my x60s used. Luckily, previous owner and I came to an agreement

I had exactly the same problem with an X60s purchase with bad battery, unlucky me I had to go out and buy a new one.

Mike