T61 Battery question

I see that the T61 can take a 6 or 9 cell battery and Lenovo sells them. Can it take a 12 cell? Do the batteries have to be from Lenovo or can any battery work?

 

You can use a 9cell and a 3 cell (I think) ultrabay battery. I know that a T61 with integrated GPU, with 9cell +3 cell UB can last 7+ hours

 

Lenovo currently does not manufacture a 12-cell battery for the T61. As Johnny T said, you can use a 9-cell (for the 15.4" model) and use a 3-cell optical bay battery to obtain a theoretical 12-cell battery. I don't recommend this, though, since the laptop will always discharge from the optical bay battery, resulting in severely diminished capacity in a relatively short period of time.

I believe you can buy non-Lenovo batteries on eBay. You can use them, but personally I wouldn't use something Lenovo didn't make. I'm just paranoid like that.

 

Could you explain the above in a more detailed manner?
I'm going to buy T61p soon and thinking about a standard 6-cell + 3-cell ultrabay as an option.
Currently I have an HP nx8220 with a 8-cell standard battery and a 8-cell travel one. This combo has been working very well for me. The travel battery is always discharged first/charged last and although it has three years now it still allows for 2h of unplugged working.
Thanks in advance.

 

I have an ultra bay battery and it behaves exactly as you described. It discharges first and charges last. I think the above posters are posting that they don't recommend it because it is hard on Lithium batteries to always be fully discharged like that. While I agree that it is harder on the batter then not discharging all the way I do still recommend the ultra bay battery. I'm at 43 full cycles on my ultra bay and according to the Lenovo power manager my battery gives 27.99 Wh of the designed 29.16 Wh. At that rate of decay I'll get several hundred cycles out of it before it needs replacing and I'm fine with that. Batteries are meant to be used and replaced and I LOVE the 6+ hours I get out of my T61P with Nvidia graphics (9 cell internal battery).

 

How long will the T61 run with the 9 cell battery running Microsoft Word and surfing the net at Starbucks?

This will be my use of the computer 90% of the time....

15.4 1680 X 1050
T8300
NVS 140M
80GB 5400 HD
2gb Memory

 

I would say about 3.5-4 hours depending on your brightness setting.

 

Sounds right. I just tested my T61p (t7500) just to see what the battery life would be like, and that's what I ended with, which suits me just fine.

 

Thanks, I will buy the ultrabay battery (and stay with the 6-cell rather than the sticking out the 9-cell). I like the compactness of the set (especially, when compared to my current one).