W870CU Battery Problem

Has anyone else had a problem with the battery pack not making contact and if so how have they fixed the problem?

My battery pack has a very slight bulge that is forcing the contacts from the battery away from the laptop and causing a disconnect. When I look at the battery when it is fitted I can see the lip of the battery pack is slightly raised above the laptop. When I remove the battery and inspect it there is a very slight bulge in it.

Initially, I would ocassionally get the message 'no battery detected' but now I get it almost constantly. I can fix the problem by pressing on the edge of the battery pack from underneathh the computer. I also notice that the four feet on the bottom of the laptop are no longer flat. The LH foot closest to me is raised a little bit off the table.

What concerns me here is that this is the second battery pack that has done this. So has anyone else had this sort of problem?

 

were you gaming alot on your battery while not plug-in?

 

Nah. I am normally plugged in all the time and I have never gamed on the battery.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Li-Ion battery bulge = very bad/dangerous. I wouldn't try using that battery again. The bulging is caused by a chemical reaction leading to a gas build-up that can be explosive. It's usually a sign of an old battery/battery charged past its expected number of cycles finally breaking down, a battery that was not manufactured correctly in the first place, or a battery that was terribly abused.

 

Unfortunately this is the second battery I have had like this. I am actually not too concerned about it 'detonating' because while it is still fitted to the computer it is no longer in electrical contact. None of the reasons given above apply to me except possibly poor manufacture / poor design and the battery has only been abused (I said a few very stern words to it ) since I started having the problem.

Has anyone else with a W870 or similar model had these problems?

 

when did you buy your w870cu and from where? do you know what's your revision version? cheers

 

I bought it in Novemeber last year from P4 Computers in Australia and the first battery lasted for about 8 months. This battery was new in August so it has only lasted 3 months. P4 to their credit have asked for the computer to be returned for repair.

Where is the revision number recorded?

 

should be somewhere on the battery or laptop, do not really know the exact location. managed to solve or find the cause?

 

Revision number will generally be on one of the ram slots inside the main component bay under the laptop.

 

Maybe the heat coming off the hard drive underneath the battery maybe the cause of the bulge.

I have a SSD for my main drive and 2nd regular HDD for storage.

 

I VERY STRONGLY AGREE that the W870CU design or perhaps the battery design is FLAWED.

Since I bought my W870CU in December 2009 I have gone through THREE batteries. Every battery has died within six months of use. Each time, the sides of the battery is bulging out; in some cases the battery doesn't fit in its spot anymore or the laptop wobbles on the battery when placed on a flat surface.

The way I use my laptop is as a desktop replacement. I do not use it on battery hardly ever so the battery merely acts as a UPS. It is plugged in 99% of the time.

It is the same story every time. Six months later, the battery stops holding a charge. Windows shows a 'No battery is detected' icon in the system tray. Unplugging the laptop causes the power to go out immediately as if the battery is not even there.

 

While batteries are considered consumable parts and using it as a UPS isn't ideal for battery longevity- that's still incredibly quick to go through them. Realistically, most batteries last 3-5 years, with about 10% degradation year over year (meaning most people see a 90-95% total power available versus brand new after one year). Complete failure in 6 months is unusual.

On top of that, bulging in Lithium Ion batteries is extremely dangerous, because as others have said it indicates a failure within the battery itself. It's highly recommended that any bulging/leaking/deformed batteries not be used after it's detected.

 

i had a similar problem on my current computer, a d820. the battery was fine for about 2 years and then it went from getting 4 hours of battery life to about 30 minutes, and then nothing. It started flashing the battery light all the time and it said that there was no battery in the drive. it was out of warranty so i took the battery apart and found that one of the cells was dead. unfortunately i wasn't able to find a place to buy a new cell to replace it so i just bought a new battery. you might try an aftermarket battery, i got one from agptek or agptech and its awesome and it was cheap.

 

I'm currently experiencing the same problem. I am a proud W870CU owner, but as an Industrial Design Engineering student, I can say that the battery location is indeed a ridiculously stupid design flaw; its primary function seems to be covering up the HDD like a lid.

While I'm still using the same battery after 1.5 years, this is the 2nd time it has happened to it. The first time, the bulge disappeared after a while.
However, since battery life lasts only for 1 hour at most, I too use it mainly as a UPS.

@Paralel, MALIBAL #2
I am in no way an expert on lithium-ion technology, but please consider my alternative theory:
The bulge could be caused simply by a full charge, rather than a gas build-up. To cite Wikipedia:

(Source: Lithium-ion polymer battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Ergo, it could be that the construction of the plastic battery casing simply is insufficiently rigid to keep the cells in their original shape. I am not to judge on that, since I have not inspected the inner construction of the cell (and I'm not too keen on doing that, since it is my only battery...).
This could explain why the bulge disappeared over time in my situation, as all batteries do self-discharge.
Lastly, this happens only to lithium-polymer batteries. Normal lithium-ion batteries require a strong metal case, but lithium-polymer cells usually don't.

Rather than buying a new battery (and perhaps going for the SSD upgrade), I'll wait for the battery to self-discharge, or find another way to discharge it. Or watch it mocking my naive theory while spontaneously combusting.

 

3rd battery failed today. Same issue as before. Battery bulging. This one lasted about 6 months as well (new last July 2011).

DEFECT DEFECT DEFECT. Clevo should do a recall.

 

I have had my Sager 8760 since April of 2010 and my battery gave out just recently, so just shy of 2 years. I used it mostly as a UPS as the battery run time was less than an hour.

My thought after reviewing the charger circuits, is that Sager did an okay job of designing the charger, but could of Have done better.

One thing that is clearly evident is the battery is way undersized for the load in which it needs to drive.

 

What Tsukasa said makes sense and is sort of consistent with my experience. My battery would bulge but after several days using the computer with the battery removed the bulge would disappear or mininise to the point where the battery contacts would again make contact. I would then reinstal the battery and it work okay for a couple of days and then as the battery expanded it would all start again.

The design means it is self regulating; after the battery expands to a certain point it breaks the electrical contacts and then no longer is charging so doesn't continue to expand and as it self discharges it shrinks until it makes contact again and the cycle repeats.

If this is accurate then this is simply a design flaw in the computer. As Tsukasa said "the battery pack is just not rigid enough to contain the cells in their original shape"

 

Normally my computer is on for 15 hours every day and sometimes is not turned off over the weekend at all as I am doing backups and downloading stuff. Maybe the hours that the computer is switched on is also a factor in this problem.