Will Lenovo offer the 9-cell battery on the T61?

Will Lenovo offer the 9-cell battery on future notebooks of the T61? Right now, PC Magazine states the battery life of the 6-cell as only 1:57. That is downright horrible. I hope the 15 inch notebooks and perhaps the T61p will offer the 9-cell battery or maybe even a 12-cell battery . That should get a battery life of about...WOW 4 hours on a DVD. That's pretty good. I am also wondering what the 9-cell battery life of the T60 was, with Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 and the ATI X1400.

Thanks,
Leon

 

you could get the optical drive battery for $107 extra

 

Yeah,
But how hard is it to replace the optical drive and such... How much battery life does it help?

 

It's very easy. It uses a modular drive so removing it probably just takes unhooking a latch or two. I'm not sure how much extra battery life you'd get off the top of my head. I'm going to guess 1-2 hours more of battery life.

 

Thanks, but I'm only going to need the extra battery life when I am traveling, and most likely I am watching DVDs then. I was wondering how much battery life you would get out of just using Microsoft Office without wi-fi and the screen dimmed down. Maybe we need to get a NBR review to find out.

Leon

 

On my T60, 15.4" WSXGA+ screen, core 2 duo 1.66, X1400, 9-cell; I can get about 5 hours with wifi on, screen brightness all the way dimmed, and Word and IM open... I haven't really tested it extensively though. I've only ran it down once since I've had it... I'm on AC power most of the time...

 

You could also save a lot of battery by getting Intel integrated graphics rather than the Nvidia Quadro graphics.

 

Thanks for the reply, but I was wondering mostly about the T61 not the T60, but if the battery life sucks for the T61, I might just go for the latter.

Leon

 

I don't think it's going to be as bad as the review. They have the fastest processor available for the machine, the dedicated graphics card, and not the 7 cell battery. You couldn't chew up more power than they are, so considering I'm only getting the 1.8ghz, the 7 cell, and Intel graphics, I'm very convinced the battery will be better.

 

I posted because...

 

I might be wrong but I don't think they'll offer a 9 cell with the T61, at least not the one with the 14.1 inch screen. It seems like the T61 is the successor to the Z61t, just labeled a T series notebook because its close to the screen size as the T60s.

 

The batteries for the T61 are different and totally incompatible with all the other T-series (total bummer). They're also miuch more expensive as a result (another bummer).

There is no plan for a 9-cell on the T61. Instead, T61 has a 7-cell. There was no 7-cell on the previous T series. As i said, different.

Yep, if i was wanting a laptop, i would run not walk to get a T60 instead of the T61. Or else wait for T62 which will hopefully adress the T61 blunders. Just like T43 (sonoma) was a battery-pig & ran hot and caused a rush on the T42.

 

thats true T60 is a much better choice, but I dont agree that T43 is a battery hog cause I own one and the standard 6 cell battery lasts for 4 hours at power source optimized setting with wifi on & screen brightness at one bar

 

Wait...

I have a brand new t61p and it has a nine cell battery. I think there has been a shortage and I'm pretty sure that once lenovo receives more batteries that the nine cells will be back for sale. I believe that's why they are holding t61p order with nine cell batteries until January.

 

Ummm, this post is from last spring.

 

Well, Renee is right as far as I can tell. Doing a little digging, Lenovo seems to consider the two 9-cell FRUs "discontinued" merch. because they're showing up on
http://www.itxchange.com/ibm/index.html
(among other outlets). These places normally sell just the outdated parts.

The reason the 9-cell got pulled is that Sanyo's batteries blew -- literally. There was a recall on FRU#42T4511. The Panasonic battery, FRU#92P1133, seems to be fine. There are plenty available outside of the Lenovo official site.

I'd wager Lenovo will put 9-cells back into circ. soon. Just cross your fingers they're not so lame that they'll re-spec them so that they're backwards incompatible with the T61.

 

What was wrong with Sanyo's batteries? Curious as I have one on my T61P I received last week. Was it just a bad batch of them or are they all bad in general?

 

Slashdot goes into it a bit.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/200204&from=rss

Sounds like the Sanyos can get very hot, and when they were tested, Sanyo found that dropping them from a certain height could trigger an explosion. Nice. Lenovo's being safe. There's a Lenovo page about the recall in March, and it describes ways to get your battery swapped:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/BATT-LENOVO.html

Really can't beat getting a brand new battery out of it!

 

Hopefully the new Sanyo's have addressed these problems. I just got mine a week ago and it's not listed as affected by the battery recall. Hopefully this means the Sanyo line was updated to not "blow up."

As far as temps the Lenovo power manager doesn't seem to report the battery getting any hotter then I would expect when under use.

 

i have never heard this...in the thinkpad video in the sticky, they talk about it and one of the questions asked was if they are going to offer the 9 cell, and they said in the future, but no plans now

 

I think i am confused...Is there or it isn't available for someone to order a 9-cell battery for a T61 15.4" ?

 

I don't get why it's such a mystery? Go to www.lenovo.com and configure one, and voila, the 9 cell battery is an option. Am I missing something here?

 

standard screens have the 9 cell...while the wide screens do not...(this if for 14in)

 

It sounded to me in the video that they were surprised by the request for the 9-cell and gave a vague well-maybe-in-the-future, not even indicating they'd do it for this current T61.

I think the failure to produce a 9 or 12 cell for the T61 is a serious engineering goof.

 

I agree with you...why is it so hard to make a 9 cell for the WS?

 

Huh, that's very weird..... what's different about the form factor on the 14 inch wide screen vs the 15 inch wide screen that the battery won't fit? May want to call a salesperson and ask about the computability there.