2y ago

Would you buy a new battery for a very old laptop?

I just got a pretty good deal on an old ThinkPad (think 10 years old now) to use as a beater for screwing with ArchLinux and hopefully to find a real use for. It's in great shape like it was never really used, but big shock, the battery is at 50% effective capacity and what's there disappears in less than an hour.

Would you bother buying a battery replacement for it? On one hand I want it to actually be usable on the go because that was sort of the point. On the other, while replacement batteries exist, I'm worried that they're already very old themselves and already "expired". Would you take the chance? I don't want to let this thing go to waste when it's still perfectly usable, in fact it's pretty fast.

15 comments

I’ve got a couple of machines that I put new batteries into not long ago. If it’s solid hardware, throw Linux in there and give it new longevity.

As a Linux toy, I’d absolutely replace it. I have a Zenbook from 2011 that still works fine enough for desktop apps with Mint after a battery swap.
At minimum though, I’d open it up to make sure the battery isn’t a bloated spicy pillow waiting to blow.

You don't buy a genuine battery, they are indeed too old. There are third party manufacturers making new batteries for old thinkpads, kingsener and greencell are two. I have kingsener in my homelab X230(Arch) and T440p(NixOS/Silverblue) and am very happy, basically better than new(more recent battery tech).

Depending on price I might go for it
I did spend like $40 on a battery for a 10 year old laptop a few years ago so that I could keep using it for troubleshooting a remote network I setup up awhile ago because it's cheaper than a new laptop.
Personally I'd see if you can find a new compatible battery not necessarily an OEM battery though as being new it's probably going to last awhile.
- How would you know if it's actually new, though? I'd assume even third-party replacements have been sitting on a shelf for years.
  It's really just making me think that laptops are terrifyingly wasteful and I've been right to not bother owning one.

just open the battery you have and replace the bad cells
- What kind of terrible advice is this?
  Absolutely do not start ripping apart your old laptop battery to replace cells if you don't know what you're doing. Depending on the battery size and type, you might also not have many cells at all to replace.
  You would be better off buying a cheap replacement battery, especially if it's already 10 years old. Any cells that aren't bad today will likely be very soon.
  Telling people to pop open a Li-Ion battery is asking for a fire.
  
  Do you work on laptop batteries often?

Back when smartphones had easily replaceable batteries, like the LG V10 I bought for my mom, I bought her a new battery after 3 years and it gave it new life.
Now, 10 years is on a different time frame. Personally, I would gauge the price of a replacement battery against how much I paid for the laptop. 10% maybe? Completely arbitrary. $20 replacement battery for a $200 used laptop.
- 10 years isn't really that old for a laptop. I still use my Lenovo T60 and right now I'm rebuilding the battery on a Dell with a Piii in it.
  
  That sounds about right, now that you're jogging my memory. I have a 2007 a Sony laptop that I eventually wiped and installed Linux. Ran so much better than Windows.
  In 2017 I bought a Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone, which ran circles around my laptop. Coupled with my laptop battery lasting about half an hour, I stopped using it.
  I just googled how to rebuild laptop batteries. It never occurred to me it could be done.

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