T61P poor battery life

The battery life on my T61p has recently become very poor. On a full charge it lasts about 30-45mins and it's just over a year old now. The cycle count is at 348. Is that high? I read that lowering the charge threshold can extend the battery life and I've had it set at 40% for quite some time now. I understand that battery degradation is normal but this seems absurd. Any ideas? Thanks

Edit: It's the 6 cell battery.

 

Hm, mine is about a year old and my cycle count is only 10, but I hardly take it off AC. I have my charge threshold set to automatic.

Does the power manager say your battery is in good condition? Have you tried resetting the gauge? I don't know if that would help any. With newer batteries it's not supposed to matter too much if you keep them charged without draining all the way.

My battery does seem strange though. When I take it off of AC and set it to maximum battery life it say it has about 3-4 hours. But, when it gets to around an hour or under it suddenly goes to sleep complaining of low battery.

 

Did you try recalibrating the battery?

 

The battery on my T43 has 360 cycles and Power Manager says it can still hold 82% of its original full charge capacity. It is about three years old.

Recently the battery in my T61p started to go flaky after just less than a year. It only had about 60 cycles, but would jump from 40% charged to 0% in a few minutes. Luckily it was still under warranty and Lenovo replaced it.

I am reading about a lot of problems with the T61 batteries.

 

mine holds 2 hours after 1+ year of usage

 

Your cycle count is getting fairly high, and I think you may need a replacement. See if you can find the Actual WHr capacity and the "Design capacity" for your battery (should be under the advanced tab in power manger).

I went through 3 batteries in the 5 years I had my T40. My original one was cycled 500+ times (often to a full 0% when the automatic cutoff safety [not standby/hibernate] engaged [don't do this, it KILLS your battery]). It had a design capacity of 47WHr, but at the end it only held 6WHr (it would actually run about 30 minutes after hitting 0% which is why I would often let it run to a full death).

My second battery was bought from a less than reputable source (can't recall the name), and had a bad cell. This exhibited the same problem as Ressom and would go from ≈60% down to 5% almost instantly. This battery caused me fits and I would often treat it even worse than my first one.

My third battery was bought from Calcellular. It was a solid battery and served me well for the last 1.5 years that I used my T40. I sold my T40 back in September (when I got the x200), but I believe it had ≈110 cycles and still held ≈42 WHr (of a rated 47WHr).

In summary. Lithium Ion batteries are consumable devices. Over time, they will not hold the same amount as they did when new. This is exacerbated by certain behaviors (frequent top offs, deep cycling, heat, etc.). It can also be mitigated by other behaviors (charge thresholds, mild temperatures, holding the battery between 30-70% most of the time, etc.). However, it WILL DEGRADE and eventually need to be replaced (hence why TopSeller models have a 3 year warranty on the notebook, but only 1 year on the battery).

 

i just took mine off AC power for the first time in awhile and I got a whopping 50 mins. Sounds like we're in the same boat dude.

 

Do you mean reset the power gauge? I did do that and I think it actually made it worse so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The other day I read a thread on some other forum where people reported capacity dropoffs after they performed the reset. Anyone done this successfully and noticed an improvement?

According to Power Manager my battery holds 31% of it's charge (ugh) which corresponds to a charge capacity of ~18Wh (original capacity was 56Wh).

I'm outside of the 1 year for the battery so I guess I need to buy a new one. Anyone know the cheapest place to pick one up?