IBM T40

[marco1]

Bought a used T40 which had a dead battery and replaced it with a used battery that holds a charge for 1 1/2 hrs. Promblem is that after 1/2 hr I get the prompt telling me to save my work and revert to ac power and then it goes in hibernation mode. If I hit the power button and it takes me back to the desktop I';m good for another 1 hr even though the little blue battery indicator says no charge or time left?

Do I need to condition this somehow..very strange?

[pianowizard]

Do I need to condition this somehow..very strange?

Indeed, you need to recondition it to recalibrate it. Battery MaxiMiser has instructions for this procedure. In a nutshell, you keep using the laptop until the battery has fully drained -- the machine turns itself off automatically. While the laptop is off, plug in the AC adapter and let it fully charge the battery. The battery LED should go from orange, to blinking green, and finally solid green. When it's solid green, wait for another hour or so to make sure it has finished recharging. Then you can turn on the computer. The whole process takes at least several hours, so it's best to do it overnight.

[yak]

Right, I'll just add that you should switch to "Disable shut-off timers" power scheme to make the laptop work until the battery is really empty.

[whizkid]

PC Doctor for DOS (that you can download for your T40 from Lenovo) has a test that drains the battery. It keeps things very busy. Turn up the screen brightness, turn on WiFi and Bluetooth if you have them, put in a CD or DVD, run the test and unplug the machine.