With repsect to both you, and the original poster, it's not IBM specifically, but battery technology and how people use them. The issue is not limited specifically to TP 600's or IBM in general.
Batteries just are not going to last forever. They're a chemical reaction, and it is not going to release energy infinetly. It's not a pure reaction, there is some impurities in the process, I'm sure, that also limit maximum energy and life. (FYI, ask you friendly neighbourhood chemist about reversible reactions.)
The more charging cycles you send the battery through, the sooner it will die. Good battery usage habits are just as important as the technology put into the battery. If you're not going to do your part by trying to get the most out of your battery, I don't want to hear you b*tch and complain about how your battery life sucks.
I use to work the front lines for these laptops, and of everyone that called in that complained about short battery life, less than 1% actually had good battery usage habits. Of those that were unavoidable failures, most were replaced free -- even the ones that were past their 1 year battery warranty period.
IBM doesn't make the batteries, someone else makes them. My sister's T22 has a LiON battery made by Sanyo. As with every manufacturing process, some bad lots get through and make it to the customer. This explains why some would see a whole bunch of laptops "go bad" within a week or two of eachother, especially if they were all ordered together. They made amends for these, even past warranty of the machine.
That's not to say that there may not be issues with the machine. Take a look at the BIOS fixes for the 600 (or any Thinkpad for that matter) and I'll bet that battery charging "optimizations" are listed. The TP600 seemed to be a victim of questionable quality parts at times.
My friend got 2.5 years out of his battery in his A21m under fairly heavy usage. Why? Because he was smart about it took my suggestions.
Don't use the battery unless you have to. It's a backup power source, not the primary.
Take out the battery when you're on AC. While the charging circuit will trickle charge it once it drops below a threshold, it's still wear and tear on the battery. Side effect of this is that there will be a little less heat generated.
Do your best to limit short charging -- try to use up the battery before recharging. Just don't let it go below 10-15% or so on LiON batteries.
Sorry for the rant, but sometimes people don't realize how much they've come to expect from technology. More and more they find themselves expecting more without actually doing anything reasonable in return. Technology isn't the answer to everything, it is fallable.
I agree, this isn't going to stop the real problems -- the spammers that just don't care about any type of "ethics" (if I can use that word in this context). The determined will still continue to do what they are now, despite any law to the contrary.
What I find interesting, is that the DMA looks like it wants to legitmize itself via this legislation. They can always point to this and say, "Look, we are obeying the law, we're not bad". The public has such a bad view of spam in general that they get taken down with it as well. I wouldn't be suprised if this was some sort of move to prevent any type of future law that could possibly make things worse (for them, that is).
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With repsect to both you, and the original poster, it's not IBM specifically, but battery technology and how people use them. The issue is not limited specifically to TP 600's or IBM in general.
Batteries just are not going to last forever. They're a chemical reaction, and it is not going to release energy infinetly. It's not a pure reaction, there is some impurities in the process, I'm sure, that also limit maximum energy and life. (FYI, ask you friendly neighbourhood chemist about reversible reactions.)
The more charging cycles you send the battery through, the sooner it will die. Good battery usage habits are just as important as the technology put into the battery. If you're not going to do your part by trying to get the most out of your battery, I don't want to hear you b*tch and complain about how your battery life sucks.
I use to work the front lines for these laptops, and of everyone that called in that complained about short battery life, less than 1% actually had good battery usage habits. Of those that were unavoidable failures, most were replaced free -- even the ones that were past their 1 year battery warranty period.
IBM doesn't make the batteries, someone else makes them. My sister's T22 has a LiON battery made by Sanyo. As with every manufacturing process, some bad lots get through and make it to the customer. This explains why some would see a whole bunch of laptops "go bad" within a week or two of eachother, especially if they were all ordered together. They made amends for these, even past warranty of the machine.
That's not to say that there may not be issues with the machine. Take a look at the BIOS fixes for the 600 (or any Thinkpad for that matter) and I'll bet that battery charging "optimizations" are listed. The TP600 seemed to be a victim of questionable quality parts at times.
My friend got 2.5 years out of his battery in his A21m under fairly heavy usage. Why? Because he was smart about it took my suggestions.
Sorry for the rant, but sometimes people don't realize how much they've come to expect from technology. More and more they find themselves expecting more without actually doing anything reasonable in return. Technology isn't the answer to everything, it is fallable.
What I find interesting, is that the DMA looks like it wants to legitmize itself via this legislation. They can always point to this and say, "Look, we are obeying the law, we're not bad". The public has such a bad view of spam in general that they get taken down with it as well. I wouldn't be suprised if this was some sort of move to prevent any type of future law that could possibly make things worse (for them, that is).