[ltp] Thinkpad battery exhausted in less than a year?

[Patrick Huber]

Hi Martin

> I have a Thinkpad X24, model 2662MWG, for two years now and I have no luck
> with batteries.
> The first battery was dead after one year and now the second is loosing
> capacity dramatically.

Afaik, IBM gives a one year warranty on their batteries. Try to get a warranty 
replacement.

I wrote IBM yesterday with my own problem (see posting "[ltp] Battery went 
nuts..." for details) to tell them my story, and that I did the 3 cycles of 
discharge and charge as explained here: 
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-50944

I got an email today telling me my "hardware may be faulty" and I should call 
the local service centre - I'll do this tomorrow.  I hope to get a fresh 
replacement battery.

> How long do your batteries last?

This depends on a lot of factors. But with most things running and discharging 
the battery with 15-20W, I'm told by "acpi -V" that the battery lasts 
something near 4hrs. I think this is realistic in my case (T41p with extended 
battery). I never really measured the time the battery lasted.

> Am I am doing something wrong?
> The notebook is used daily at normal room temperature. I power the notebook
> when the battery is less than 15% and I disconnect power, as soon as they
> are 100% charged. If the notebook is off I sometimes do not disconnect and
> leave it powered overnight. I avoid deep discharges.

That's what IBM says to "Extending battery life": (see link above)

I don't think you're doing something wrong. I leave the system on power if  I 
can. I disconnect it overnight unless it needs to be charged.

> Now I have to buy the third battery. I have the choice between
> 10.8V/4000mAh (FRU 02K6760) and 14.4V/1700mAh (FRU 02K6758). I already had
> these rubbishy 10.8V batterys. Should I try the 14.4V this time?

Have you looked around for information about these two parts and their 
quality? While investigating my own battery issues I came across quite a few 
voices about a TP 600's battery...

Don't forget to consider this too:
10.8V * 4Ah = 43.2Wh
14.4V * 1.7Ah = 24.48Wh

So the 14V battery will only give half as much battery-time as the 10V battery 
would.

> Are there any tools that give me more information than
> cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state and cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state?

I don't think there's more information available. I guess most of the data 
shown there comes directly from the battery.

good luck
Patrick