Refurbished Batteries, Good or Bad?

TheMadReaper asks: "I recently had to replace my laptop battery and couldn't decide whether to go for a new battery or a refurbished one. The refurbished ones are sold at a lot of places, but then I ran across this article that claims that refurbished batteries suck. For sure a bunch of you out there have tried refurbished batteries. So tell me, are they a good buy or a scam?"

Comments

Question I had before

[zogger]

--I brought this up in another thread, but it was really a thread drift effort, something I have wondered for a long time now. Why can't these laptop makers just come up with a slide in slide out battery pack that accepts off the shelf rechargeable batteries? D or C or AA cells? I have a couple of the bulk re-charging stations for those batteries (nicads is what I have) and they work great, and if you get a bad cell, it is easily replaced,stores all over sell them, and they relatively cheap. So many other consumer devices use standardized batteries, but as soon as you get to "computer" then non standardized and ridiculously expensive rules. Wazzup with that, is it as simple as they just make so much profit on their custom designed batt packs that they don't care?

What about 2nd Hand batteries

[rgbe]

My laptop (Toshiba 440-CDX) battery died on me about 6 months ago, yes it was annoying,... I couldn't use my laptop as a walkman on the way home from Uni.

But then I bought an older model laptop (Toshiba 410-CDT) for parts from an online auction, it came with a battery that luckily suited my new laptop and that battery has been very good. This method is however hit and miss.

Psi

X-ray of a PowerBook says you're right on the $

[adzoox]

Good point - look at an XRay of a PowerBook and what do you see?

Re:Is it like refurbished printer cartrages

[PurpleFloyd]

NiCds haven't been seen in the laptop industry for ages; their capacity-to-weight ratio is abysmal. While you might see NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries in older or off-brand laptops, the type included with pretty much every new laptop from a major manufacturer is LiIon (lithium ion), which beats the pants off NiCd and NiMH in the capacity-to-weight and capacity-to-volume ratios, but tends to be picky about how it's charged. The issue the article's author has with LiIon "refurbishers" is that they replace failed cells with new ones that have a different internal resistance than the other cells in the pack; this confuses the (calibrated) recharging circutry and can destroy the entire pack.

As for NiCd "memory," you would do well to read this article, which explains the myth and reality of NiCd memory effect. As for "nickel platinum" batteries, a Google for them didn't turn up anything; neither did "NiPl." Also, a quick check of my LaserJet IIp printer cartridge showed the two contacts to be made of steel (they're far too thin for lead; if they were lead and I applied the amount of pressure I did, they would have been flatter than pancakes. As for battery pack contacts, they're just little bits of metal. I'm sure they could be replaced for a few cents; it's the cells inside that make up most of the cost.

Performance and charging circuitry

[Andy Dodd]

Almost all laptops made for the past 5-6 years use Lithium-Ion batteries.

Charging circuity designed for Li-Ion is totally unsuitable for laptops.

Putting out a battery pack that accepted arbitrary Li-Ion cells is currently illegal - In order to purchase bare Li-Ion sells you apparently have to have some sort of a license. (If you look for bare Li-Ion cells online, they are ALWAYS sold in packs, even if they might be advertised as a "pair of cells", reading the fine print often reveals that they're in a pack with overcharge/overdischarge protection circuitry.) This is because Li-Ion cells w/o protection circuitry can be extremely hazardous. (Think of the incredible exploding Powerbooks in the past.)

If any laptop manufacturer still used NiCd or NiMH, we might see such packs. But they don't.

Interesting note: Most amateur (ham) radio equipment manufacturers sell "dry cell holder" battery packs for their handhelds that are exactly what you're asking for, although almost all hams will still use their main (expensive) pack.