Thinkpads Forum

I've had my X301 for about 2 years now and it's still going strong. Lately I've been thinking of getting the 3 Cell bay battery to increase battery life, but wondering whether it's worth the extra purchase. Currently I only use the standard 3 Cell and get about 1.5 - 2.0 hours use.

Does anyone else use 2x 3 Cell batteries in the X301? How long does you battery life last on average?

The bay battery because it always discharges first, tends to wear out quickly. There's no way to change this. You might be better off getting the six cell if you don't mind the extra weight.

I replaced my 3 cell with a 6 cell and also replaced the DVD which I don't use with a 3 cell bay battery. The system doesn't feel much heavier and now has great battery life.

I'm about to do the same thing with my X301 - I ordered the 3-cell bay battery and have the original 6-cell. For some reason, though, my 3-cell is taking forever to process/ship. I'll let you know my impressions once the battery arrives

love my X301 but the battery life is awful - on a full charge I can only get 2.5 hrs tops from the 6-cell.

I ended up just buying the battery. So now I have 2x 3 cell batteries, and the battery life is significantly better.

The first half of the battery time seems to last longer however, but that's probably because the bay battery is newer and has less wear than my original. FredGarvin was right in that the bay battery is discharged first before the system switches to the other battery.

Mine seems to take a lot longer to fully charge though.

good to hear. my 3-cell bay battery just shipped. i'll soon have the original 6-cell + the 3-cell in the bay. hopefully it'll give my x301 usable battery life

Definitely. With the 2x 3-cells installed, I get at least 4 hours of use, mainly web browsing, and some VPN/remote desktop work.

With a 6-cell and 3-cell, I imagine you'll get even more.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that you *can* change the discharge order of the bay/internal battery if you're using Linux. The tp_smapi module allows you to force discharge of any installed batteries, so you should be able to make the primary battery discharge even if the firmware defaults to discharging the bay battery first.

Disclaimer: I don't have a bay battery (although I do have an X300), so I can't actually test this.

I'm not sure, as I've never installed Linux on my X301. Wish I could do it Windows though.

demesne wrote:I'm not sure, as I've never installed Linux on my X301. Wish I could do it Windows though.

Yes, it is odd... I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that you should install Linux. I simply was pointing out that it might be a software limitation rather than a hardware one.

It could be, I always assumed it was determined by the BIOS, hence the reason why there's no option to change it in Power Manager?

Or perhaps there's a more technical reason for it.

Before I got the battery, I thought the system would load balance the power over the two batteries. I'm not sure that's even possible though, as I'm not an electrical engineer!

I just logged on to ask a similar question so I'll post it here.

I have an X301 with the 6 cell battery and should be getting the 3 cell bay battery tomorrow. I just wondered if anybody knew how many charge/discharge cycles these batteries are good for? I appreciate that they will deteriorate slowly but let's say before they get to holding a 50% charge. I may buy a spare set of both batteries.
Also if I remove the batteries when at home to just use the power jack (conserving battery cycles) does that cause any problems?

cheers

Have the bay battery installed so getting pretty good times out of the Laptop - perhaps around 5 hours with wifi on all the time but screen about half brightness.
Anyone got any tips on settings for these batteries or how they should be used to preserve battery life?