Thinkpads Forum

How long should you expect TP 600 to run on the battery. I would like to know if the battery that came with the used on I recently bought is still OK or should I buy a fresh one. My battery now will last for approximately two (2) hours.

If your battery is lasting 2 hours, I would consider myself very very lucky. You have a good battery! Now, the nitty gritty. The 600 series is horrible when it comes to ruining your battery. When you have the TP plugged up to AC, take the battery out. The cycling to constantly recharge the battery when it is full will eventually ruin your 2 hours of battery time and one day, suddenly you'll find that on battery your time will drop suddenly from about 80% to the message to "plug up" or the computer will be shutting down.

By the way, did you actually test the battery for the whole 2 hours? If you decided to trust the indicator within windows, you might be in for a rude awakening. Most of us 600 series owners have learned that what the indicator says and what actually happens are 2 different things. I've never seen a used 600 series TP and the battery it came with last a full 2 hours.

Thanks for the tip about running it on AC. I have not ran it constantly on the battery for more than 45 minutes to one (1) hour at any one time. Total time appears to be about two (2) hours of total operation between recharges. Unless I am burning CDs on the battery and then the battery goes down somewhat faster. I was just wondering if I should buy a second battery as a backup. I primarily use it to upload digital images from my digital cameras to temporally store them and burn them to CDs when I am away from home. The potential problems with overcharging the battery while operating on AC bothers me. Are there an stand alone chargers that can charge the battery out of the computer.

It's not an overcharging issue. The issue is that if the battery is in and the machine is plugged in, the battery will get recharged whenever it reaches 90%. This can put on a LOT of cycles on your battery, and shorten its life.

And the crazy thing about the 600 series batteries is that when their capacity is low from age, they read 100% full and gradually discharge to some level then suddenly drop to 5% or 3%. Of course, that's not what really happens, it's just what the crazy chip on the battery pack says.

I'm testing my 600X with PC doctor. It's got a battery rundown test. One main battery ran for 70 minutes full out, and an UltraSlimBay ran for 64, but slightly different tests. I'll post more when I run a couple more trials.

hi, missed that thread yesterday *g*

my main battery goes 2 hours (running prime95 in testmode) or a bit more than 3 hours while surfing the internet (stuff that doesnt need much cpu), its a 3.6Ah Battery.

since i do count the cycles my battery i can say that it has 46 cycles and its still working as new.

but its a good idea to remove the battery of the notebook but not because the recharging but coz the temperature! i do so and hope to get my 500 cycles or 2 years out of it with at least 80% capacity still in it.

the ultrabay one goes for 80mins (prime95) or ~2 hours inet-surfing ( kinda old plus lost already 16% capacity), its a 2.8Ah.

afaik mobilemeter does measure the capacity right, so when you know whats in it and what is consumed you can use your mind to calc the runtime ( i bet its more accurate than windows will ever be ).

oh and lets hear what mobilemeter says about your battery

Here are some testing results from my machine. I have a 600X with an 800MHz PIII and one 256MB stick installed. The hard drive is a 40GB IBM/Hitachi 40GNX (5400RPM FDB).

I ran the PC Doctor Battery Rundown test from IBM's site on several batteries. I have two older batteries that used to work somewhat. Now one won't charge at all, and the other runs for six minutes. (See the FS forum if you want them cheap!)

I ran the test from the floppy drive connected externally, and no optical drive installed. Screen was on full brightness.

Main battery 1: 94 minutes
Main battery 2: 73 minutes
UltraSlimBay battery 1: 70 minutes
UltraSlimBay battery 2: 63 minutes

I think those are respectable considering that the rundown test is very hard on the machine. It runs the CPU full out and keeps the hard drive and floppy working continuously. The machine runs rather warm and the fan starts soon after the test begins and stays on.

As one more data point, I also ran battery 1 with the 6x DVD drive installed and the Win98 600X restore CD in place. Instead of 94 minutes, it got 70.

Gentle web surfing gets me MUCH longer run times.

I don't know if those tests are available for the 600 or 600E.

Oh yes, both my "main" batteries are no-name 3600mAh (Yum Cha as dansdata.com calls them) generics from an online store. Both UltraSlimBay batteries are IBM brand, bought factory-sealed from eBay (2800mAh IIRC).

IBM main batteries are spec'ed at 3200mAh (again, IIRC).

Hi

whizkid said: "...it's just what the crazy chip on the battery pack says."

I've heard some rumours about a tool which is able to somehow reset that crazy chip on the batteries. I've called IBM immediately afterwards, but noone agreed with me.
Perhaps they do not want to spread that kind of tools in order to sell more batteries or it was just a hoax about that tool.

Does anyone of you know someting about that?