X61 (7674) - Battery Issue

[Peptate]

I have an X61 (Non-tablet 7674-VXV) that I use primarily for work related to documents only. I purchased this computer to be an ultra-portable and specifically grabbed the Penryn architecture for the increased battery life (should've grabbed LV in hindsight).

PM tells me the battery health is 74Wh on a full charge out of a 74.88Wh design, with 30 cycles. Manufacturer is SONY and was produced on 2008-10-25. FRU/PN: 42T4633. AFAIK, not on the battery recall list.

Now the issue:
For the past week, I've been running observational battery tests, because it seemed as if my battery life was significantly less than my peer's X61 running Memrom with intensive applications (Flash, Java) whereas I was only using LibreOffice.

It takes roughly 5+ hours to charge from 25-100% on a 65W power supply. Sometimes, I'll be working for 6+ hours plugged in and notice that the battery percentage only increased by ~10%. Battery drain is horrendous, lasting me about 1-2 hours on the lowest brightness setting on a balanced power plan.

I've purchased a brand new battery because this is unacceptable, but am wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or if this might be due to other hardware irregularities.

Thanks

(TL:DR; Battery takes abnormal time to charge, discharges too quickly. PM shows very healthy battery.)
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On an un-related note, my battery lock latch (upper right hand corner) has become loose and sometimes switches to unlock in my bag. Anyway I can tighten this?

[ajkula66]

Have you tried switching batteries with your co-worker to observe their respective behaviour? That would be the first thing I would do, presuming that he/she would agree to it...

Otherwise, it's either a bad battery (PM won't tell you everything) or a faulty charging circuit.

A *known good* genuine battery is the only way to properly determine a culprit IMO.

Good luck.