T61 battery dead after 19 cycles?

[CamCabbit]

Hey all, I'm new to the forum so please be gentle.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my T61's battery.  I normally use my system as you would a desktop PC, meaning the battery has only cycled 19 times since I got it back in 2007.  Yesterday the battery was perfectly fine to my knowledge.  Today I wake up and see the battery light blinking orange.  Opening the Power Manager program tells me that my battery condition is "poor".   

Here is what all it says.

Battery Details:

Status: No activity

Remaining percentage: 0%

Remaining capacity: 0.00 Wh

Full charge capacity: 42.49 Wh

Current: 0.14 A

Voltage: 9.68 V

Wattage: 1.32 W

Temperature: 29 C

Cycle count: 19

Manufacturer name: SONY

Manufacture date: 2007-12-01

First used date: 2007-12

SerialNumber: 1305

Bar-Code number: 1ZEAV7C118S

FRU part number: 92P1141

Device chemestry: Li-Ion

Design capacity: 56.16 Wh

Design voltage: 10.80 V

When I click the "Battery Maintenance" button, the entire system shuts down.  No "Windows is shutting down" prompt, it's like someone pulled the plug without a battery in it.

System Stats:

Windows 7 Home Premium x64

6GB Ram

500GB HDD

Battery Stats:

Bar Code #: 1192P1142Z1ZEAV7C118S

FRU P/N: 92P1141

ASM P/N: 92P1142

What I don't get is why I only got 19 cycles out of the battery.  Could it be a defective battery?  I ran the Battery Recall program to see if mine was one that was recalled, but it says it isn't.  The system has never actually ran off the battery for more than 20 minutes (we were having a power outage because the power pole transformer blew).

Any assistance is appreciated.

[TuuS]

Actually it's hard on these batteries keeping them running on ac power. Ideally you want to set the charge threshold so it allows the battery to discharge but doesn't start charging it until it hits a prest level. On mine, it starts charging at 70% and stops at 90%, so the charge only begins once every couple months, but on default settings you topping off the charge everytime you start it. However for it to suddenly die like this it sounds like either the controller died, or it detected an unsafe charging condition, such as a cell overheating and shut down the battery to protect it. Without this protection Li-Ion batteries can catch on fire.

[CamCabbit]

Meh.  I might as well ditch the battery and pick up one of the Advanced Docks.  I mean, I use the system for light gaming and general web browsing, so having an external video card to replace my current Intel graphics chip would be great.  Oh well, now all I have to do is find a place near me that recycles laptop batteries.  Is it safe to run the system without a battery?  I'm guessing it'd probably be as safe as running a regular desktop pc...

[TuuS · Accepted solution]

A used battery with at least 20% charge remaining should be an easy score for $10 or so. If you're using it docked, it will serve only as a backup and could save your hardware and data by keeping the system from crashing in a power loss situation. You can then setup power manager to hibernate or shout down after 1 min on battery, so your battery only needs enough to do the successful shut down.

Generic batteries are another option, just don't get the unbranded knock-offs, they tend to catch fire.

[eecon]

Technically speaking, I don't think you need a battery in there (even an old one with 15-20% capacity) as long as you have the dock plugged into an UPS, even for a power-off undocking/docking ritual whenever swapping out to a different T61p laptop,

but ................

I can clearly see the need to have a battery in there (even if your machine(s) are only used in docking stations at all times) when you perform a hot-swap or removal from that dock (including swaps or removals while on Standby).

Murphy's Law tells me that one day I'll have a docked unit w/o a battery sitting on Standby while thinking it was powered down completely and remove it from the dock .... ouch ..... so I always leave older 6-Cells in my two separately docked T61p systems, plus keep their docks' 90W power adapters plugged into a couple of UPS devices.

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