The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Read through the Battery Guide for more information, but it's generally a bad idea to get generic batteries. Some of the required specs may not be right (even though they claim to work), they could be made of substandard materials, and in general just don't work right.
I always email and ask for the mfg date from the battery. I never by anything older then few months old.
Also, I would not trust any of the brand-x batteries. I only by the batteries from the laptop's mfg. The brand-x are only a few bucks cheaper and have the potential for so many bad issues it's not worth it to me if I happened to get a defective battery.
I can still find a decent battery there for a good $60 less then buying direct from HP or other online battery seller. Just always take time to research your seller on eBay...and use either PayPal or a credit card.
the lion batteries for my digicam off ebay have worked fine, but they did NOT hold a charge (even when new) for as long as the manufacturers, and they stopped taking a charge long before the manufacturers battery died.
I have had decent success with Li-Ion batteries from third-party vendors, such as the massive Chinese/Taiwanese eBay battery market. The product does not hold as much of charge (or last as long) as an original item, but it works all the same for ~70-80% less $$.
You know all of those Sony batteries that went up in flames? Those were THOUGHT to have been built correctly. Imagine what cheap knockoffs are like in terms of quality.
Li-ion cells aren't produced by but a few companies. The cost you pay is mostly for the person who put the cells together into the pack. You can even repack your own if your battery uses cylindrical cells and and good at that kind of thing. I would purchase things off eBay if the price was right, and you could see that it was made fairly recently (Li-Ion die in a few years no mater what you do...)
That said, I guess the whole bad circuit protection, catching on fire thing should worry you some. Its not an easy call. If you use the laptop in one or two places, my better solution was just to get another AC and leave it there (that is I use my laptop at home and in my shared office 90% of the time).
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
