Buyer Beware! - Your power adapter may be cheating you!

[bananaman]

Hi kccheng, and welcome to the Lenovo User Community!

First, 3 years is a great lifespan for a lithium-ion battery. It can be be as short as 12-18 months if you don't do anything to optimize for lifespan.

Second, as you point out, one of the design criteria for laptops is low weight. By using the battery to help support peak loads, a smaller power adapter can be used. When you remove the battery those same peak loads can't be supported. In some cases you can fix this by using a larger power adapter... which means more weight. This is a common design choice across vendors, particularly in the ultralight market.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Welcome-FAQs-Knowledge-Base/Should-I-run-with-my-battery-in-or-out/ta-p/...

[kccheng]

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bananaman wrote:

Hi kccheng, and welcome to the Lenovo User Community!

First, 3 years is a great lifespan for a lithium-ion battery. It can be be as short as 12-18 months if you don't do anything to optimize for lifespan.

Second, as you point out, one of the design criteria for laptops is low weight. By using the battery to help support peak loads, a smaller power adapter can be used. When you remove the battery those same peak loads can't be supported. In some cases you can fix this by using a larger power adapter... which means more weight. This is a common design choice across vendors, particularly in the ultralight market.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Welcome-FAQs-Knowledge-Base/Should-I-run-with-my-battery-in-or-out/ta-p/...

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Hi,

I believe you are right, from designer's point of view.  But I don't quite agree

from customer's point of view.  I will not throw away the battery, the almost die battery,

if I have enough information.

Well, I don't expect to get anything by complaining here.  Just hope Lenovo's people know

not everyone happy to see their expensive notebook can't work full speed because

battery is not plugin.  Specially, when their customer (like me, the Thinkpad fans)

need to figure out this by themselves !!

At least for me ... I pay for the CPU, not for the battery.  The "No battery, no full power CPU" design ... that's just not

sounds right to me.

But if I buy a battery box which comes with 2 CPUs in the box ... than I will say this is a great design.

Regards

KC

[kccheng]

OK, I find a way to cheat, let x61 think the 65W AC power is 90W.

WARNING !! This is dangerous if you don't know what you are doing ... and

don't call me if you got smoke come out from your x61 box !!  YOU ARE WARNED !!!

x61 use a 3 pin power connector, the central pin is used to identify whether the

power adapter is 65W or 90W.  For 65W power, there is a 1k Ohm resistor

between ground and the central pin ... simply cut that wire off, and x61 will think

it has a 90W power and let CPU run at it's full speed, 2GHz !!  My x61 is back :-)

x61 does not actually use 65W (unless you has docking station that I don't know),

doing this is OK, at least for me.   To be more safe, I use another AC power (which is

also has ~20V output) from my retired HP omnibook to get more power.

Again, if you are not sure ... don't do it.

Regards,

KC

Moderator Note: Edited subject (model number included) to match content.

[t_zakaria60]

HELLO ALL,

i think that the 65w power isn't the best one for the (>1.8GHz) X61 or at least the 2GHz ones.

I explain, with the 65w, my X61 (7674-FH1 T7300(2GHz), 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD) is unable to full charge the battery when it is powered on! It can only reach some 38% Max....

I can get the 100% only when I turn it off and leave it in charge.

(I tried it with 2 different 8 cells batteries)

[timzh]

Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Unbelievable!

I am really out of words to describe my outrage over this so called DESIGN by Lenovo!  I now can see why Thinkpad brand value is depreciating after changing owners. When I bought my X61 4 years ago, I thought I bought the best notebook PC available at that time. In fact I got a truncated one!  

Since I do most of my job in an office environment, I do not need the battery and removing it will save more weight if I need to move, so I usually disconnect the battery and would rather trade the weight of the battery with that of the adapter (I usually turn the PC into hibernation if I need to move). So, when I paid almost $2000 buying a top performance notebook, I actually got only 60% of it working!!! 4 years!!!

Recently my son is the main user of the notebook and he uses it as a desktop, he keeps complaining the performance and I keep blaming him for getting some malware though scanning the pc found nothing. Now I feel so sorry for my son and feel so angry about Lenovo!