t60 charger cord blew out

I bought a t60 on ebay last week, and after 3 days, i was charging the laptop for a hour or so while it wasn't in hibernation mode. And i heard a beep and than a pop sound. Than charger cord wasn't working. I felt the box on the cord and it felt scolding hot.

laptop still works but has very low battery life, and i'm going to order a brand new charger cord. What i'm confused on is, how reliable and durable are these cords? I only used this cord for 3 days. I admit though i did leave the cord plugged in over night once or twice just so it would remain at 100% battery in the morning.

But ya i'm concerned with buying a new cord and getting similar results ;\ So is the failure rate on these things more or less unpredictable due to bad build quality by lenovo, or did i more or less get a faulty one/on its last legs type deal? I'm hoping i won't have to buy a new cord every month.

Also did i do anything wrong by letting it get that hot? Am i supposed to check it often to see how hot it is getting?

 

Lenovo don't manufacture these adapter or power cords, they are sourced from third parties, whom may also manufacture for companies like hp, Dell, acer, asus, etc. Having said that these power cords and power adapters are fairly reliable, you must have a well used one or just a faulty one. If you are replacing the actual adapter make sure you get the oem one.

 

hmmm this is the adapter i just bought:
NEW AC Adapter Charger for IBM ThinkPad T60 T61 X60 Z60 - eBay (item 270660730924 end time Nov-13-10 08:10:36 PST)

guess it isn't oem but it says it has protection against overheating and is OEM compatible etc. Hopefully it was a good buy ;d. A lot of people left positive feedback about charger cords they bought.

 

I only use oem one. The generic one should be okay, but they tend to be less reliable.

 

that is a cheap cable.. I also only use OEM, but i dont see why it would not work.

 

wow the price for the oem is ridiculous compared to the one i got. It's $13 more if getting it from china, and $27 ore if buying from canadian seller. At least on ebay, and Im not sure i'd trust the china seller over the canadian one. not only that it would take longer

does lenovo have a website where u buy a replacement charger cord? Wonder if it costs even more from there.

Anyways when i get the cheap replacement, doi have to worry about it damaging my laptop with too much voltage or something like that? Or it would just blow it's fuse too? I know it should be fine, but now I'm kinda worried since it was pretty cheap and maybe cause of that the quality/design is bad

 

come again?! no, what is ridiculous are your expectations.

ebay is littered with these generic chargers and like those cheap generic power supplies for desktops, it's a roll of the dice whether you're even getting something of decent quality.

do you really want to chance frying your laptop over a $2+$10(s/h) piece of crap power supply?

you got off lucky that it was only the cord that failed [this time]. care to play russian roulette some more?

 

if you are in USA then outlet.lenovo.com should stock some of these OEM chargers.