T61: 9-Cell battery failure (FRU#42T4511)

[daniel_on_web]

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billbolton wrote:

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daniel_on_web wrote:

First used: 2008-08

you surely cannot claim that 147 cycles is a reasonable lifetime for a Li-Ion battery.

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Like it or not, 147 equivalent full cycles over more than 2 years is within the reasonable range for the life time of a LiON battery in laptop device service.

Cheers,

Bill

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Hello Bill,

147 cycles are less then half a year of daily battery use.. considering that - you can see i preserved battery life trying to keep the comptuer plugged to the elec. my battery still has almost  60% of it's original capacity and i cannot understand why although cliaming it is charged at 89% it won't use the battery.

I have long time experience of using Thinkpads in which i still work with T42 (about a houndred of them) and others. At none of them i saw this problem. Strangely many people experience this problem with the T61 series.

I must admit that i keep using lenovo and thinkpads although the higher price because of the excellence in hardware and keep recomanding colleges on thinkpads.

This experience of a battery dieing suddenly while seeing that so many people complained about the same problem, make me consider once again my opinion.

Daniel.

P.S.

This error notice "feels" like an unattended bug.

[birdiee]

hi there

i've got the same problem as all the others here... but i do not know if i still have some warranty possibilitys...

wich number do i need to figure it out?

thx in advance for answers

cheers birdiee

edit: there is no S/N on it... only barcode, FRU and ASM...???

[adwaitvaidya]

I am facing the exact issue with my T61 as well that I purchased in Nov 2007. This is my machine info: Machine type 8890-AA5. My 9 cell battery is now showing me the same error.

I am extremely dissappointed in lenovo's product quality. This is my second thinkpad, the first one is a T42p I purchased in 2004. Both laptops have been used daily with similar usage patterns. My T42 is still running great after 6 years <awesome job IBM> and it still has about 15 mins of battery life (and that is all I need).

My T61 on the other hand has had - 2 hinge failures (both times the right hand side hinge failed) and one keyboard/ failure. Now my battery is dead. Considering the number of people who have complained about this failure, it is definitely a manufacturer issue. I paid a price premium and thought I was getting excellent hardware in return for that. More striking to me is the difference in product quality when it was IBM vs. Lenovo.

Unless lenovo is willing to provide me excellent customer service and replace my battery free of charge, I will not be purchasing a lenovo ever again. I already talked to customer service and they are not willing to take this up as a valid issue even thought people have reported this a number of times online as an issue for these laptops. My older laptop is certainly overdue for replacement and lenovo thanks to your poor service, you have just lost yourself a repeat customer.

Moderator edit by bananaman: Removed serial number to prevent misuse.

[adwaitvaidya]

So, I went home and did some more research.

According to this link - http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=BATT-082009 lenovo has already issued a product recall for specific batteries which expired on Oct 1 2010. For T61 they mention that the following battery FRU numbers qualify for the program - 42T4546, 42T4566, 92P1141. I checked out my battery and it is 92P1132. That seems darn close to the last number I have.

The symptoms they mention on that webpage are exactly the symptoms a number of people are experiencing - "battery cannot be charged error". Also, this is a sudden and catastrophic battery failure since my battery was holding a 1.5 hr charge just fine until a couple of weeks ago.

So my question is why do only certain batteries qualify?

[haraldpost]

Well, I bought my T61 second hand on monday, and tonight the 9-cell battery dies suddenly.

Yesterday it had 100% charge and was working fine.

Today I used it without the AC plugged in, and when it got down to 43% it just failed.

Remaining capacity: 31,49 Wh

Full charge capacity: 74,73 Wh

Current: 0,00 A

Voltage: 11,38 V

Temperature: 31 C

Cycle count: 64

Manufacturer name: Panasonic

Man. date: 2008-01-25

First used date: 2008-06

SerialNumber: 545

Bar-Code Number: 1ZDB781S0GH

FRU Part Number: 92P1133

I've had a second hand IBM R52 for 5 years now, and the battery still lasting at least 1,5 hours...the machine has been used for hours and hours every day.

So this is very, very disappointing by Lenovo. I did expect ThinkPad standards, you didn't deliver.

Also, screen hinges is loose.

[lenovobry]

I have 6 of these laptops at work and 3 of the batteries failed in the past 2 weeks with the same message as above.  This is obviously a defective part, but they won't replace because they are over 12 months old.  Nice service Lenovo!!!   Way to push me to Dell!!!

[JJune71]

Same problem just happened to my T61.  I was still getting about 1.5 hr use out of my battery and then one day last week, amber light starts flashing and I get the message that the battery failed and cannot be charged.

Like many others, I ran a diagnostic last night on Lenovo's site and of course my particular battery was not one  being offered for replacement, although the program did already expire.  It appears whatever is causing this sudden failure is not isolated to just certain battery models, why is Lenovo ignoring all these failures?  After reading up this problem, I don't feel very comfortable purchasing another battery from Lenovo.

Lenovo just doesn't get it!!  Don't give people the line that battery's wear out eventually and 18 months or even 2 years is acceptable time for use.  I don't care that my battery was only holding half it's charge and that it would eventually get worse over time.  Now it's completely useless, I can't even move around to different areas in my house without shutting it down, if I'm working on something important now & I bump the power cord, it immediately shuts off.

I've been a faithful Lenovo customer, I also own a T-30, T-43, & a R-51

My T-30 still has it's original battery, with over 1200 cycles and I can still get close to a half hour on full charge.  We can all see where your quality has gone.  

After something like this why would anyone ever consider buying a $175 OEM Lenovo replacement battery, you don't seem to offer any better quality than the $35 replacement battery that's available, also with a one year warranty. 

[JJune71]

are you sick Bill? 147 cycle reasonable!!! My T-30 still has original battery, over 1200 cycles & I can still squeak about a half our out of a full charge. My T-61 battery also just died, it was hold a 50% of it's original charge when new. To go from 50% to Zero in an instant is very disturbing

[Susuwatari]

I am also having this issue with my battery (FRU #42T4511).  I was still getting a good two hours of the battery but today it wouldn't even turn on.  When running it on AC it claims that the battery is at 100% and just has an error with charging, but this clearly isn't the case. 

Cycle count- 165

First used- 2008-08

Is there anything I can do about this right now?

[jeffhqb]

I don't know anything you can do other than buy a new battery.  Lenovo appears to be stonewalling this issue.  Because Lenove has not responded to the complaints, customers have to assume that they intended for the battery to operate in this manner.  The problem with that is you don't know if their new products are designed to act the same way (the battery self destructs after 1-2 years so you HAVE to replace it), or have they changed the design so the battery life gradually tapers off as one would expect.  I recently bought an additional laptop and didn't consider a Lenovo product because of this uncertainty.