Ultrabay Battery Capacity - 29Wh or 23Wh?

I bought one of these for my T61.

As soon as I popped it in, I got a warning in the Thinkvantage Power Manger icon that the battery condition is "Fair". It said the battery can hold 79% of its rated capacity. The specs list the battery as 29Wh. Power Manager says its full capacity is 23Wh's...

I called Lenovo and they sent a replacement. This one (another Sony model), showed the exact same behavior. When I first put the battery in, it says it is in Fair coniditon and can only hold 76% of it rated capacity.

After running the Battery Maintenance thingy, both batteries got upgraded to "Good" condition, though thier max charge capacity is still 23Wh.

I am guessing this is normal...I doubt I would get 2 batteries that were so similarly defective. The original battery was built April 12, 2007, and the replacement battery was May 2007, so they arent very old.

Should I get another replacement??

Jeff

 

Hopefully a couple UltraBay battery owners will chime in here as I do not own one, but if I was in your situation I would get it replaced - did you talk to them over the phone about it to see if perhaps maybe a setting is incorrect?

 

try decharging it and recharging it a few times.

 

supposed to be 29-ish, thats what mine is

 

Lenovo is sending out a 3rd battery for me to try.

 

I got the 3rd battery today...it charges fully to 29Wh.

Lenovo support was great. I called yesterday afternoon, and the replacement showed up this morning at 9am via DHL.

Jeff

 

Great to hear you got it working to its full capacity now.

 

Mine was good out of the box.... 29.16 for me

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=143584

 

Doh! After discharging to 0%, the Full Charge Capacity again dropped to 80% (23.60 Wh).

This is the 3rd battery in a row that has done this exact same thing.

Whats the deal??

 

Did you ever call and ask them about the 23 / 29Wh issue or did you just tell them that it was defective and that you wanted another one ?

 

Why is it discharging to 0%? Is that because the ultrabay gets used before the main battery?

See here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=131571&highlight=ultrabay+battery

If the same thing is happening to you, maybe it's a "feature" of your OS instead of a hardware problem. Lithium batteries supposedly don't like to be discharged completely. Maybe that's just something you'll have to live with when using the Ultrabay - but I don't have my laptop yet, so what do I know?

Maybe there's some fancy battery control software out there somewhere that will allow a threshold to be defined for the battery so that it never goes empty (and consequently it would be protected.) Try google.

 

I have Vista and it drains the ultrabay battery first, all the way to 0 %, then switches over to the main battery. There isnt any setting that I could find in Vista's power options, or in the Thinkvantage Power Manager application, to change this behaviour.

 

I found this on the microsoft website, why don't you try this and see if you can change the charge threshold for the ultrabay battery:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/333b0917-e8ac-4850-a4bf-c8c8804a12a71033.mspx

 

Once it discharges that Battery to 0% does it immediately start recharging when you plug it in? Does it charge both batteries at once or just one at a time?

 

Those settings only appear to affect the main battery. The ultrabay battery goes to 0% regardless of the percentages set in windows.

Only one battery charges at a time. The main battery charges first, then the ultrabay battery.

 

i have cycled through mine 4 times ant it goes from 1-100 all the time...

 

Ok, this is the most definitive guide I have found:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_use_UltraBay_batteries

Here's another useful post:

http://osdir.com/ml/linux.hardware.thinkpad/2003-07/msg00182.html

So far it doesn't look like there's any way of changing the battery discharge threshold for the Ultrabay, nor is there a way of changing the order.

I'm also getting an ultrabay battery, and perhaps it's best to view it as a protective buffer for your main battery. The lifetime of the ultrabay battery will be shorter since it's always fully discharged, but your main battery performance should be better than if it were used alone. That's a pretty small consolation, I know.

If it lasts a couple years, I'll be happy with it, and I don't expect it to hold 100% - batteries are batteries. OP, I don't think there's anything wrong with your hardware.

 

Mine goes from 0-100% as well, the problem is that 100% goes to 23Wh after the first discharge.

Here is a screenshot of the power manager that shows the Design capacity and the current full charge capacity.

 

hmm. i c ill get more info and post tonite... i still think your battery is ripping you off