Comments on: Planned obsolescence stinks

By: Xaprb

Xaprb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:58:59 +0000

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.

By: chris g

chris g — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:44:19 +0000

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.

By: Xaprb

Xaprb — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:12:55 +0000

Batteries wearing out isn’t evil, but the cost (or actually, the ratio of cost to the cost of the laptop) is.

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:53:56 +0000

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. :-/

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:22:09 +0000

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.