Thinkpads Forum

First of all, I have to say that this laptop is amazing, and I'm totally in love. It was well worth the wait in shipping and handling. I tested the most demanding of all 1080P sources, the videos straight out of my DSLR camera, and they play full speed most of the time in Media Player Classic.

I've noticed something odd though. Sometimes, I'll plug in my AC adapter, and it will say "plugged in, not charging." I haven't really run the battery down very much. Sometimes it will charge, and it always charges while it's turned off. When I got the computer, I wiped the primary partition and installed Windows 7 fresh with my license key so I wouldn't get any of the customary bloatware, but I had neglected to install the Thinkvantage Power Management setup until now. But even before then, sometimes it would charge, and sometimes it wouldn't. I was over 93% every time. Now I'm seeing some special battery and charging management options in Lenovo's PM tool and I'm starting to get the idea that these Thinkpads are kind of a special case when it comes to charging. Can someone step in and de-mystify this for a first-time Thinkpad owner like me and hopefully reassure me my machine/battery/charger isn't defective?

Thanks again guys

You can best solve it buy checking a couple of things and reading these notes.
1) There is threshold management ie charge above 40 stop at 50. This allows you not to cycle the battery if you are always on AC and thus not prepaturely wear the battery out through excessive cycles.
2) Without the software, some batteries will not charge all the way to 100% unless you drain it to about 1 or 0% (could be higher).

Braddah, I think your battery is fine so no need to sweat it. Just play around with it with the above in mind and report back.

In Seattle, how is Milton Bradley?

My machine came with PM3.2 preloaded, and in default setting battery threshold is enabled, it says will not charge when it's above 96%.