Re: ThinkPad Battery Question

[Bill Berry <w-berry@nwu.edu>]

I used to have a PowerBook 5300 (yeah, yeah I know...), and with PowerBooks
you can reset the power manager, or battery manager, or whatever, and use a
utility that drains the battery completely and recharges it. This keeps the
battery from wearing out prematurely from the constant charging.

Is there anything similar for the ThinkPad? Does IBM have any advice about
battery usage and maintenance?



>At 11:49 AM 10/23/96 -0700, P.van Schijndel wrote:
>>I have an IBM 360CSE for about a year and a half.  The battery life has
>>gradually declined to the point that after only 70 seconds without any disk
>>access (just typing this message, in fact, pulling the plug, and waiting)
>>the
>>ThinkPad beeps to signal low battery power, and 60 seconds after that, the
>>ThinkPad beeps its final warning.
>>
>>What's wrong?  Is my battery toast?  Is there anything I can do to save it?
>
>        Sounds like it to me.
>
>        I'm surprised its toast after only a year and a half though.
>Usually you can expect 2+ years before it gets anything like that--even with
>fairly heavy use.
>
>        Did you leave it plugged in a lot and did it "cycle" (discharge to
>about 90% and then re-charge--constantly)?  My 750 did that--it was a *very*
>bad idea to leave it plugged in with the battery inside.  All that constant
>cycling got the battery into an early grave.
>
>-------
>Randy Whittle		rwhittle@usa.net
>USC Graduate School of Business    http://www-scf.usc.edu/~whittle
>  "If you've been in the game for 30 minutes and still don't know who
>is the patsy...*YOU* are the patsy."      - Warren Buffet





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Bill Berry
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