Change the Cells of an IBM 240X Baterry ?

[sloomy]

Hi

Is it possible to change the cells of an IBM 240X battery and refurbish it for your self.

I know it is dangerous, but is this possible ? i will just replace the cells with better ones ?

Any info, link, idea is welcome.

s.

[dsvochak]

"I know it is dangerous, but is this possible ? i will just replace the cells with better ones ? " The short answer is "yes, it's possible" the longer answer is "yes, it's possible, but unless you're an expert with access to the appropriate equipment, why would you want to take the risk?

The warnings printed on the battery aren't just there for fun. Besides the danger of explosion, there is some nasty stuff in the battery.

On a cost (including risk)/benefit basis something like

http://www.batteryrefill.com/laptops/ib ... _240.phtml

makes more sense.

The above link is not an endorsement of batteryrefill.com. Don't know anything about them. But I don't know how you could do it yourself any cheaper and there's no danger.

[vincentfox]

I mailed in an old battery for refill to the BatteryRefill people in mid-November. So far I'm not too pleased with their customer service. A bit over 3 weeks later I'm still waiting when their web page says 1-week turnaround. ResellerRatings.com doesn't have nice things to say about them either. So I send an email requesting cancellation, no reply.

I went ahead and ordered from Laptops4Less a new generic (not-IBM) battery for my 240 which arrived quickly and seems to work as advertised.

BatteryRefill just emailed me today saying my battery shipped, several days AFTER sending them a cancel request. Oh well, when it arrives I'll test it and see if at least they live up to their claims of longer battery life.

It *IS* terribly frustrating to use an older laptop, and realize it's a battery pack stuffed with something equivalent to in my case 1400 mAh cells when I can go to Fry's and buy NiMH up to 2600 mAh storage now. If only these battery packs were a little more user-maintable.... Yeah I know Li-Ion is not the same thing...

[vincentfox]

I have to say I've sent a battery off to BatteryRefill.com and they did appear to do the job.

They were slow to get it back, almost a month unlike the week claimed. Also unresponsive to emails but then I got a rush of "we had problems with our email server please forgive us!".

Anyhow, the battery has a few spots of glue if I look for them where it was opened up I suppose, but nothing I would even call cosmetic. It does hold a pretty good charge now, although the increase to 1700 mAh is still to me good but nothing to write home about.

I wish these things were user-refillable so I could go out and buy a set of high-power batteries if I chose to and use those. I mean I know there are Li-Ion and NiMh batteries out there upwards of 2,300 mAh I would pay extra to have a single "ultra" long-lived battery.

For an older series they would probably be a decent choice as it's hard to find good batteries on EBay that you don't think it's some guy in his apartment slapping stickers that say NEW onto a used battery. I'm not going to go too far in endorsing them due to their slowness and if you look at resellerratings.com there are numerous negative comments. Getting good batteries for old laptops should not be this unneccesarily difficult!