Planned obsolescence stinks
My Dell laptop’s battery died (slowly). Thinking I was being clever, I bought a replacement part from a name brand instead of Dell. That one died, too, but much more spectacularly. If I buy another battery, this time from Dell, I’ll have spent more on batteries than on the laptop.
This stinks. It’s all around us, though: refrigerators that have non-serviceable compressors, so when they wear out you have to get a new refrigerator. Lamps with sealed non-replaceable switches that have crappy solder joints that corrode through after a little while, just due to the heat and current. And thousands upon thousands of items for which replacement parts are available, but ridiculously expensive.
So do I buy a new battery, or shell out twice as much money as the battery would cost and get a new laptop?
Further Reading:
one word, apple ;)
Battery costs as much as a brand new and not too cheap pc, but I have my macbook for 3 years now with the original battery and its still up for 3-3,5 hours of browsing.
Istvan Podor
11 Nov 09 at 6:21 am
I found out a long time ago that very few manufacturers can produce a laptop which will last me five years, comes with quality replaceable parts, and good warranty.
I bought my first IBM Thinkpad in about 1999-2000 and whilst I state up front that they are expensive, hopping into my office today you’d find:
* v1 the original
* v2 bought in Feb 2004
* v3 bought in August 2008
I tote lots of batteries when travelling and despite having used Thinkpad for 10 years now, in that entire time I’ve only had to *replace* one battery.
Bought a new IBM spare and it worked like a charm.
Note that IBM laptops are personal machines for me, work also provide “toys” from Dell/HP and change them every 2-3 years or when they inevitably break: differences are obvious, my Thinkpad is built like a tank and consistently lasts, the Dell breaks.
To this day my ‘v1′ is still 100% functional albeit a little bit slow compared to v2/v3 :-)
Alex
11 Nov 09 at 6:27 am
That’s weird. Are batteries for your inspiron that expensive?
I have an XPS 1330 for 14 months and I’m really happy about it (great warranty and runs ubuntu fine). I have the original 6-cell battery and I put it under a quite heavy use: I discharge it *twice* every day for 1:15 on the train to/from work. Of course its capacity is seriously decreased (about 55% of design) but I can still get 1,5 hours out of it so I’m not even thinking of replacing it yet. Even if I did, a brand new original 6-cell costs $150, which is not that low, but still it’s reasonable and not comparable to the laptop’s price.
(ok to be really honest, I do have a spare 9-cell battery that I rarely use on big trips, and is still quite new. So I don’t mind getting only 1,5 hours from the main one, cause when I need more I can get it)
Kostas
11 Nov 09 at 8:25 am
Unfortunately this slow death is a characteristic of the lithium-ion batteries in most laptops, they ‘wear out’ each time you cycle them and should be considered a consumable if you work on battery power a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion#Disadvantages_of_traditional_Li-ion_technology
That said, the ‘just buy a new one’ mentality does seem to have pervaded almost every aspect of our culture, mostly because people don’t want to spend the extra cash up front for a superior product.
Manufacturers are driven to lower costs and they do so by relaxing quality control or adopting construction methods which are cheaper but non-serviceable. The cynic would note that they stand to make more money long-term using this strategy, but I would also point out that many of us would rather ‘just buy a new one’ than have to wait for a repair or a replacement part, further driving this cycle.
Personally I try to consider build quality and serviceable design when making my own purchasing decisions, which is why I’m on my second Thinkpad, and wouldn’t go near a Dell. The first (a z61m) was my primary machine for 3 years and still works great, it was replaced with a t400s only because I wanted something smaller and more powerful.
This kind of mentality extends to almost everything you can buy, by being aware of the problem and making wise purchasing decisions you can at least mitigate the problem, though it will cost more up-front you’ll usually come out ahead in the long run.
Dan
11 Nov 09 at 8:55 am
I’m definitely not buying another cheap Dell/HP/etc. I’m thinking about one of the Toshibas or a Lenovo (nee IBM Thinkpad). Sun sells the Toshibas preconfigured with OpenSolaris, which I understand is actually a very good deal even if you want to put another OS on it.
Another thing I’m thinking about is switching from one main computer (laptop) to a small netbook-size one for when I travel, and use something like one of the BOLData computers for my desktop, to save space and power and get a simpler machine. So I’d have two computers, but I rarely travel anyway.
Finally, whatever I do in the future, I’m not going to leave a laptop plugged into A/C power long-term with the battery in it. I always had a voice in the back of my head saying that was my problem, but I was too lazy to take the battery out when I used the computer as my desktop workstation.
Xaprb
11 Nov 09 at 10:14 am
I’ll second the ThinkPad. I’ve only had to replace 1 battery over 3 laptops and only 1 actual laptop (which took a nasty fall). Their Linux compatability is great (everything worked out of box with Fedora 11 on my T400) and their service is pretty nice too.
Michael Peters
11 Nov 09 at 10:33 am
As far as brands I’d definitely second (or third) the Thinkpad vote… but regarding batteries I don’t think this is really a case of planned obsolescence. Rechargeable batteries wear out due to chemical limitations, not evil plotting manufacturers. The good news is that battery technology is always improving. See for example the “5 year” batteries in the new Macbooks. Of course Apple is probably exaggerating, and no one has owned one long enough to know, but still it should do better.
Also I believe the “remove batteries when on A/C long term” thing is a largely an urban legend these days. Check with your manufacturer at least. Both Thinkpads and Apples (and probably most/all others) have smart circuitry that tries pretty hard to do the right thing… among other things they charge the battery up to ~100% and then let it slowly deplete to 90% or so (with no load.. takes a while.. basically analogous to the battery sitting detached from the computer) and then charge it again… and the only reason they keep charging it occasionally is so that you’ve always got a usable amount of power. In theory the only way you can beat that is if you know you won’t be using it for at least several months and you are okay with the charge getting down near zero in the meantime. (Though of course zero is bad too.)
Anyway, sorry for the rambling. Good luck with your new machine decision… always challenging but fun.
Ben
11 Nov 09 at 7:22 pm
I’ve had my System76 Pangolin Performance (panp4i) for about 15 months, and in the past few months the battery capacity has dropped drastically. I think it’s about industry standard. :-/
Tim McCormack
11 Nov 09 at 11:53 pm
Batteries wearing out isn’t evil, but the cost (or actually, the ratio of cost to the cost of the laptop) is.
Xaprb
12 Nov 09 at 4:12 am
Just open the battery pack and the product number/code should be printed on the cells. Google for the code and buy the cells. Then swap the cells and you have a new battery for less than $50. You can open the battery pack open using a kitchen knife and to remove the current battery and put the new onces in you have to do a bit of soldering, but really nothing a 12 year old can’t do.
chris g
12 Nov 09 at 11:44 pm
From what I saw (I’m away now), the battery pack is molded together and heat sealed, so pretty hard to service without destroying. I assume all that’s wrong is a bad solder joint or something.
Xaprb
13 Nov 09 at 11:58 am