Is it time to replace battery yet?

I have a Thinkpad X30 with a battery manufacturing date of October 2002. Since I'm the second owner of this laptop, I don't know how much the previous owner used this notebook. However, BatteryMaximiser says the battery has been charged 150 times. I get about 2.5-3 hours of battery life on the lowest brightness settings.

Is it time to buy a replacement battery for better battery life? I'll buy an aftermarket brand on Ebay because this laptop isn't worth putting another $100 for an OEM.

 

150 full charge cycles is what I would consider to be middle age for most batteries.

I'm not sure how that program determines how many charge cycles are on the battery- is that anytime the battery was used more than 15%, or when the battery was run down to 25% of its capacity.

Honestly 2 or 3 hours is pretty good for any laptop battery, but in your thinkpad I think it should be at least 4. The battery won't just die on you- it will slowly lose its ability to hold a charge until it just won't power the laptop anymore and you will notice that coming a long way away. If you need the full portability of the laptop (of which a large part is that 4 hours of power) then you'll want to get a new battery.

 

Thinkpad batteries store that information. Pretty slick, actually. If you need more than the 2.5-3 hours of power, get a new battery, but it's more than likely not worth it. Give it a few months, and when it starts giving you less than 2 hours of charge, then start looking.