Poor battery condition

[Entropy1024]

I have an IBM Think Pad T60 1951 laptop bought from new 2 years ago. It has been working well up to a fortnight ago when the battery died overnight. It had been working absolutely fine with a battery duration of about 90mins in normal use. Now the battery management page says :-

Remaining power 93%
Battery Condition poor
Battery cycle count 234

The laptop will not run on battery anymore even though it says charge is 93%. Orange battery icon on lid constantly flashing.

Why should it be fine one day and the very next dead? Is this something to do with the battery management chip forcing you to buy a new battery? Reminds me of the ink jet cartridges that time out after a certain period regardless of how much ink they have left in them. Is Lenovo doing a similar thing?

I went to get a new battery but found they cost £220! I could buy a new laptop for that. So I bought a clone one off eBay for £35. When I plugged it in it lasted for a couple of hours but now that it is dead it won’t charge back up.

Has anyone else had this? Is the original battery truly dead and why won’t the new one charge? Perhaps it’s a fault with the laptop itself?

Any help would be very greatly received.

[sktn77a]

Is this something to do with the battery management chip forcing you to buy a new battery? Reminds me of the ink jet cartridges that time out after a certain period regardless of how much ink they have left in them. Is Lenovo doing a similar thing?

Ha! I doubt this is the case! However, the aftermarket replacement battery situation for laptops is such a disgrace right now (your experience is similar to mine and others) that I think your best bet is to bite the bullet and buy a new one. Google the part number and specify IBM or Lenovo original. You can get them cheaper than that.

[visionviper]

If you purchase from eBay make sure the auction says that it is an OEM part (IBM or Lenovo). Sellers will use the part number to sell you a third party battery.

[HFat]

I wouldn't to pay more than $100 for a new 6 cell battery.
I'd rather buy a used battery than a clone. I paid about 20$ for the last one I bought and, though its capacity isn't close to design of course, it works well enough.

[Entropy1024]

Nobody seems surprised the battery went from running for 90 some minutes one day to dead the next. Is this normal then? Do Li-ion batteries die so suddenly? Should the battery not have gotten progressively worse over a few months holding less and less charge each time?

Also I would have thought a battery would last more than 2 years and that 234 charge cycles was not excessive. My last cell phone ran on an Li-ion battery every day for 3 years with a charge every night (over 1,000 charge cycles) and was still going strong when I upgraded phone.

Cheers
Tim

[hausman]

Nobody seems surprised the battery went from running for 90 some minutes one day to dead the next. Is this normal then? Do Li-ion batteries die so suddenly? Should the battery not have gotten progressively worse over a few months holding less and less charge each time?

This mode of failure is normal. Notebook batteries are made from several cells arranged in series. What typically happens is that the cells slowly deteriorate due to chemistry (the slowly depleting maximum charge) until one day one or more cells short out, causing the battery as a whole to fail, i.e. be unable to deliver the design voltage. When this happens the ThinkPad's recharging circuitry declares the battery dead.

Also I would have thought a battery would last more than 2 years and that 234 charge cycles was not excessive.

That seems typical, especially if you leave the battery in the ThinkPad all the time, including when it's on AC power. Heat from your ThinkPad is the enemy of long battery life.

My last cell phone ran on an Li-ion battery every day for 3 years with a charge every night (over 1,000 charge cycles) and was still going strong when I upgraded phone.

Cellphones and digital cameras don't generate the same amount of heat as a notebook. They also don't have the same level of "sophisticated" battery management circuitry that causes them to declare a battery to be dead even if there might still be some life in it. (It's a guess on my part, but I suspect that notebooks also draw more power relative to battery size as do cellphones and digital cameras. Consider that a new cellphone battery will last for days or even a week or more will a notebook battery will last only a few hours on a single charge.) I have a digital camera and two OEM Li-Ion batteries that I bought in 2002 that still hold a decent charge. Then again, I don't use the camera anywhere nearly as frequently as my ThinkPads or cellphone.

[Entropy1024]

This mode of failure is normal. Notebook batteries are made from several cells arranged in series. What typically happens is that the cells slowly deteriorate due to chemistry (the slowly depleting maximum charge) until one day one or more cells short out, causing the battery as a whole to fail, i.e. be unable to deliver the design voltage. When this happens the ThinkPad's recharging circuitry declares the battery dead.

If I swap out the cells in the original battery housing for new ones; will the battery management system recognise the new batteries as good or once it has declared the battery dead is that something that it can't recover from?

Many thanks for the support.

[sktn77a]

Depends on the battery design - sometimes they need to be reprogrammed, others just running the battery up and down several times can do this.