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IBM 600 Series Laptops and Flaky Batteries?
netdemonboberb asks:
"I don't know where else we should turn, because no site will write articles on [this subject] and IBM is denying that their IBM 600 series laptops have flaky batteries. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute distributed these laptops to freshman students in 1999 and almost everyone I knew in my class had this issue. Ralph Levien's page has suggested it appears to be an issue with the 'Smart Monitoring' circuitry.
I'm writing this article to get the issue out in the open so IBM can no longer deny it. These batteries are expensive, and I have had to replace mine 4 times already. Can anyone who reads/maintains slashdot help or provide any advice on getting resolution for this?" I must say that from personal experience, I've wondered if this might be the case as well. I have an IBM Thinkpad 600e laptop and I've already gone through 2 batteries. The laptop is currently inactive as it must be tied to the wall if it is to be used. Has anyone else experienced shorter-than-average battery life using these laptops? Were you able to do anything to improve the battery life?
I've got a 560 and used it mainly connected to the mains. My battery died very fast as it seems the TP would keep the battery topped up even if you was using mains power. Upgrading to the latest BIOS fixed the problem but I still had to shell out for a new battery (as mentioned, not cheap).
Could it be that certain "lots" of batteries or laptops were bad? We have upgraded most of these to the T23 model, so I don't have one handy to check manufacture dates. Perhaps someone else who has had little or no problems can give you some dates.
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Am I the only one who thinks Tux is as creepy as the clown on Poltergeist?
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
I had a thinkpad 600e model 2645-EU
The interesting thing is that it a 3 year warranty on the whole, but the battery itself had only 1 year. When the battery failed on me the first year i had the laptop, I called IBM support and they said "yeah we had a problem with one run of the batteries and it's fixed now", I got an RMA'd one, it worked for 2 years, and now it's dead too. We even tried here at work to 'fool' IBM by trying to RMA a whole laptop -- they sent us a refurbished 600e... sans the battery, with the instructions "use your old batter"
I have a vaio SR11k. The battery is slowly degrading (down to 120 minutes from initial 150 minutes a year ago), but the interesting thing is that at the beginning the charge reported by the BIOS (APM) was almost linear, now I get the last 60 (!) minutes of operation in the last 4% of detected battery charge.
My solution to this is ext3 (I mostly run Linux on it) and just running it until it goes down by itself. If the IBMs have similar behaviour, but force a power-off at, say, 10% detected charge, an equivalent battery would be good for only about 30 minutes instead of the 2 hours I get.
Side note: I am not using the laptop that often, maybe 2 times per week on battery.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
We had a bunch of 600 and 600e's at work, and one by one the batteries died. We had a 3 year warrantee deal, and it was ok for about 2-2.5 years. Then, they stop honoring dead batteries! I don't know if our tech help didn't protest or tell the right people in our company, but I was told "IBM won't honor the warrantee, your group or you personally will have to buy a new battery". Just out and out said, too bad. WTF! Since I was the last one to have such an old laptop, no one really cared to raise a stink about it.
We generally get good service from IBM, but the techs said that IBM was blowing off these batteries because they all started dying after 1.5-2.5 years, and they figured they ALL were going to go bad.
This sounds like the car manufacturer beancounter stories- how much to fix all the problems vs. how much in potential lawsuits. And how many people are going to press a lawsuit for a $100-$200 battery?
The worst part is the battery is dead, the hard drive is physically failing, it's slow as molasses, but since it still works I can't get an upgrade! How many seconds in a microwave....?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Disclaimer: I am a longtime Mac user as well.
Ok. So the guy has a problem with ONE brand of PC laptops. With PC's you have a choice of over a dozen vendors and the best recommendation you can come up with is to buy a Mac? A computer that uses a completely different operating system and would require not only re-training but a reinvestment in new software for this new OS? Why didn't you recommend a HP, Dell, Gateway,Sony, Micron or even a whitebox laptop?
THINK people THINK. There's nothing wrong with Macs. I love them. But they aren't for everyone.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Try this. if you have one of these laptops that seems to have a short battery life (You'll notice, battery meters will say you have 100%, 95%, 90%, 85%, 80%, 75%, then suddenly 5%.) run until the battery is "dead". Then use tape to cover the two MIDDLE battery terminals these are the terminals that report the charge level back to the laptop. (there are 4 altogether). Put the battery back in and the laptop will start right up, I get another 30-40 minutes. Any battery monitors will report that you don't have a battery installed so you won't know how much time you have left, AND DO NOT CHARGE YOUR LAPTOP WITH THESE TERMINALS COVERED. The laptop will not detect when the battery is full and you can overcharge the battery permanently damaging it (not that it isn't screwed up already)
Insert pithy comment here.
The worst are the Ni-mh (nickel metal hydride) batteries. When I was servicing a pool of 390s for a life insurance company, IBM first denied there was a problem, then released a software utility to cycle the batteries which would allegedly restore their capacity, then IBM replaced them all with Lithium Ion batteries. When the insurance company eventually bought new laptops, they still bought "stinkpads."
Businesses still buy IBM hardware because of name recognition. They figure that the biggest must be the best. These decisions are made by suits whose VCRs flash 12:00, and who never ask any technical people for advice. As long as this is true, IBM will keep selling garbage. They know that suckers will buy their name.
How ya like dat?
I have a Sony laptop that uses the BP-7 battery, and its smart circuitry seems to have developed a bit of a problem as well. The battery charges, and according to PowerPanel has a 98% capacity charge. Within five minutes of use it has dropped to 10% and triggers an emergency suspend.
Is two years use unreasonable for a battery that retails at over $200?
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
I have a 15" 1GHz Ti PowerBook that I bought just before Christmas.. I used it for about a week and was a little frustrated that the maximum charge percentage that I could reach dropped to 99% within two days and 98% by the end of the week..
Here's where things get a little strange..
After that first week, I hopped on a plane and flew to Japan for 3 weeks. The battery reading charged right up to 100%..
Now that I'm back in the US, my battery is back to a max charge of 99%. I'm betting that the power system in the US is just dirty enough that it's affecting our batteries.
To add more support to this idea, my iPod (5GB) battery life had dropped to 6 hours of use before the trip to Japan. On the return leg, it lasted almost the entire 11 hour flight.. Both the PB and iPod batteries seemed to be rejuvenated by the Japanese power system (Note: Japan uses the same power standard as the US).
Sigh...
All too true. Our campus standardized on IBM laptops as well. They're adequate I suppose, but I certainly wouldn't put them anywhere near the league of my current favorite models (Toshiba).
As insult to injury, they also decided to standardize on:
- Lotus Notes (Anyone read the now-defunct interface hall of shame? Lotus Notes breaks every established interface rule that would normally result in "ease of use" for a user.)
and
- Lexmark Laser Printers (with the good ol' DMCA anti-refill chip in them).
Sigh...
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I worked support for Dell's portable computers a year ago. Dell warrenties batteries for 1 year and expects then to fail after 1.5-2 years. The life span is mostly based on usage, more cycles, shorter life. However, batteries that are never used will still fail in about the same time frame. (The engineers were always denying this, but my guess would be it is because the system gives the battery a short charge everytime it is turned on) If you use the system often, four batteries in as many years is pretty average (most power users get less than a year). IBM and dell use batteries from the same manufacturer(s) so I'd expect simialr results. (heck, if we're being honest, almost every laptop sold is built by one company on one assembly line).
My $.02 USD
Mark
For all of my laptops, I made it a habit to discharge the battery to about 10% every two to three weeks and recharge it when the unit is off. If I'm not going to be using the battery I take it out and leave it in the laptop bag.
Pretty simple but tedious. At the same time, however, I have not had to purchase a replacement battery for any laptop I've ever owned.
As a side note, I gave my Thinkpad 600 to my mother about a year ago and she has never had a problem either. She still discharges the battery to 10% once a month and it is still in good condition.
I wish this article had a few more details so that we can actually compare this to others experiences. I have a few questions:
How many charge/discharge cycles did the battery go through? (3 yrs of use could be 1000 cycles, or could be 2)
How often were these laptops just left plugged in for days. (NiMH batteries are prone to the "memory" effect. Only let the battery discharge 2% and then recharge it repeatedly leaves a battery that can only be discharged 2%)
How long do the batteries get left dead? (Discharging any rechargeable pack does not usually discharge all the cells. One cell will be ~0 volts, another will be 0.5 Volts, this results in the 0.5 volt cell attempting to "charge" the ~0 volt cell backwards and next thing you know, the 12 volt pack will only do 10.5 volts)
I have had similar problems with cordless razors, Radio battery packs, etc. I realize that I abuse my battery packs a lot. I leave batteries in the car where they go through 60 degree changes in temperature overnight. I leave them in equipment on the "charger" for days on end. I let them completely discharge and stay that way for weeks. All of this means I buy battery packs a lot! I usually take my battery pack down to the local battery place and have them crack it open, change the cells, and glue it back together. (It's a lot cheaper and I usually get more mAh because I use the latest/greatest cell to replace the old one) I also get my twice yearly lecture on taking care of the batteries.
As much as we would like to blame "Big, Bad, IBM", is this really IBM, or is this a bunch of battery packs being pushed beyond their limits. Would the battery from a Toshiba or Panasonic last as long under the same conditions?
Laptop batteries are disposable components with a very limited lifetime. You will have to replace them after a year or two. Every manufacturer and every experienced user knows this. The same is true for AC adapters. These, too, are designed to break.
Laptops are only just taking to grab the market, after desktop PCs have become commonplace and profit margins declined, the best profits are now in mobile computing.
But I still wonder why we, the users, accept overpriced short-life batteries, after all these years.
A few weeks ago, I wrote up a text for an online petition with a long list of reasons why we need an industry standard for laptop batteries, similar to consumber electronics battery cells.
Noone really showed interest, though, so I didn't expect enough people to join the cause and haven't started the actual petition.
So again, I welcome your comments.
(And I'm looking for someone willing to host the petition, too, since my puny web server isn't quite ready for that...)
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You may like my a cappella music
I had no idea laptop batteries died this frequently. I've got a Dell Latitude with two LiIon batteries, and they've been going good for a little over 3 years now. I use this laptop quite frequently, for taking notes in class, and it spends a fair amount of time off of wall current. I guess I only use it about 15 hours a week, is that low? Are we talking only 1 year for people who use their laptops 40+ hours a week?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I had two Li batterys for my cheap CTX laptop. They started off lasting an hour, After six months they last twenty minutes and not long after were dead. Since I allways haul it around in its padded suitcase I got three
:-O
6Volts 10AH lead acid batterys for about E30 total which fit in a section of the bag. Added about 1Kg to the weight. The mains PSU puts out 20V DC so the 18V from the batterys runs it nicly for about 10 hours. I made a little adaptor with a diode and a resistor so I can trickle charge the batterys with the laptop psu, though after a trip I usually put the batterys on proper charger.
My laptop has a built in switching regulator and runs happily from 10.5V to 20V but some, like those Sony Vios I can't afford need, a regulated input.
I hook the three batterys together with some short wire with spade connectors. I didn't want to put an inline fuse in each wire so if I ever get the connections seriously wrong there will be some fireworks that won't be appriciated on a packed train.
My years of ham radio, building electronic projects and seeing idiots
weld spanners to industrial UPS battery stacks have taught me to be
carefull with high-current batterys.
I went to dinner with a CEO at a johnson and johnson subsidiary company the other night, and we were taling about experiances with different laptops, ranging from dell to apple. I said that IBM makes quality laptops but for a premium (my personal experiance). He quickly said "oh god they don't, we purchased several hundred laptops from them and everyone has had a battery problem, and we're losing a rediculous ammount of money buying everyone new ones every few weeks".
I didn't ask about the model numbers, but when I saw this article I just thought throw that out there.
Wow. I was going to moderate on this story, but I found a thread interesting enought that I have to comment; gotta find someplace else to blow that last point.
Anyway...
My WallStreet PBG3 is close to five years old. I'm on my third battery -- on the first two, the LEDs don't even light up anymore. At first, I was getting about three hours per battery (and I was using both bays, so it could run close to six hours). After a couple years, the cells had (I guess) degraded a bit, to maybe 2.5 hours per battery.
That was before I installed Mac OS X (which I've been running since the first Public Beta (which really should have been called an "Alpha", but that's another topic)). The time per battery immediately dropped to about 1 hour -- it happening so suddenly must mean that the system is just more power-hungry (not cycling down the CPU, virtual memory keeping the HD (almost) always spinning, etc.).
That much would be almost okay, I guess, but get this: while the machine is asleep and unplugged the fan runs -- it stops when I plug it in and starts again when I unplug it, all while it's asleep. Weirdest bug I've ever heard of -- I don't even know how they could have made it do that if they tried, but there it is. It's really awful for several reasons: first, it runs down the battery pretty fast while sleeping. Even worse, it increases the risk of losing power completely. I find that after it puts itself to sleep, I have about fifteen minutes to reach an outlet if I want it to recover. Still worse, I suspect that the frequent shallow cycles (as it drains a couple percent while I carry it around unplugged for a couple hours and then plug it back in) are real murder on the battery, causing it to degrade even faster than otherwise. Within a year, the older battery wouldn't charge at all and the newer one was already pretty bad.
Since then, that one has died completely and I've tried to avoid using battery power at all, to preserve this new one.
About the only-charging-to-98% thing: I suspect that that's actually a good thing -- something they did on purpose to reduce the shallow-cycle problem. I've noticed that mine doesn't start charging unless it's below 95% when I plug it in, but then it'll go all the way to 100% (or even 101%) -- the effect is to combine several shallow cycles into one slightly deeper one.
The (other) worst thing is that when it dies, it does it abruptly, with zero warning, sometimes while the meter is reading near full -- usually 50-60%, but once as high as 87%.
I'd assume that the power drain during sleep is a matter of incomplete support for such an old model, and that the newer iBooks and PBG4s would be better that way, even if X is still such a power-hog. I would have hoped the battery longevity would be better too -- good thing I didn't buy that new iBook yet; I wonder if the new 12" PBG4 is any better.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
How about doing a Slashdot Pole on how long your laptop battery lasted? Let's get some real data.
We later went out to purchase another 1000 laptops and desktops (a $2 million dollar order). We told IBM to not even bother bidding because they refused to take care of the laptop problem. It was then that they FINALLY acknowledged that they had a problem with their batteries and offered to take care of it by sending us out 200 new batteries!
We told them to stick it because we were replacing the laptops, they had lived their life. Our end users were upset and didn't want IBM ever again, laptop or desktop. IBM wound up losing a major account due to those stupid batteries.
The irony of the situation is IBM's website that states:
Thanks to IBM's advanced power management systems, the ThinkPad's battery life has earned a powerhouse of a reputation. [HA!] But as all travelers know, extra batteries can still be your best friend. [In this case, PLENTY of extra Batteries] With ThinkPad's battery and power options, you can ensure that your notebook is always ready when you are.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.