Does this battery seem pretty new or old?

[thinkpac]

The battery in the T60 (with 15" screen) I got off ebay is a 9-cell battery. I did a test to see how long it could run. I turned off the wireless, changed the power options to prevent it from going into standby mode, and just let it sit at the Windows desktop without any applications running. So it was basically just running the screensaver for most of the time, and it lasted around 4 hours 30 minutes. How does that sound? How long could I expect a brand new 9-cell battery to last?

[Harryc]

The duration points to the fact that it is within the 'good' range, but age (manufacture date/cycles) and capacity (full over design capacity) are best seen in the power management applet under battery.

[qviri]

.

[thinkpac]

The duration points to the fact that it is within the 'good' range, but age (manufacture date/cycles) and capacity (full over design capacity) are best seen in the power management applet under battery.

I'm not sure which applet you are referring to? I checked the Power Options under the Control Panel, and the battery info did not show manufacture date or # of cycles. Is there supposed to be IBM software on this system, because it doesn't look like there's any.

Also, what are the specs of the T60? The CPU and GPU, and their corresponding power consumption and effect on battery life, vary quite a lot on that laptop...

It is a T2500 2.0 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM, and ATI X1400 w/128MB.

Are there any rough estimates on how much maximum charge a battery loses over time, assuming a certain # of hours of daily usage (web surfing, email, programming, youtube)?

[Harryc]

Install the power management software at this link.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 62928.html

[thinkpac]

Thanks for the link. So is all the software/drivers on that page included on the recovery discs? My T60 didn't come with any recovery discs, so I will probably try to buy some.

[Harryc]

Most of it, yes.