After Market Batteries

The Sony branded Sony extra life battery is $299 dollars! A bit much for my taste. Does anyone here have any experience with aftermarket batteries? Any particular recomendations? Thanks in advance.

 

Personally would not buy battery made by someone other than Sony. If you have the part number you can search on eBay, Google, Pricegrabber, etc.

 

I'm piggybacking on jeme's question to also ask for your thoughts on power adapters. Sony charges $90 or so, but non-OEM chargers are much cheaper. Are they safe? Do they implement the same (or better) safeguard circuitry as the Sony's to prolong the life of your [very expensive] battery?

 

as always try to get the original ..
even for camera companies like Nikon they do recall some batch of their batteries, and Sanyo too.. the 2500nimh. I don't think OEM is gonna recall or put up any announcement if they discover that their battery's batch has some problems.
So there's a risk of frying your notebook there.

 

I heard that if you do get an aftermarket battery, it won't work on your notebook by refusing to boot up until you disable a software running in the background when you use the original battery.

Just a thought. Of course, I would highly reccommend OEM batteries.

 

I recently requested a new battery from my extended warranty (3rd party product). I also replaced my laptop LCD due to some dark spots on the screen. After about 1 month, my laptop stopped booting intermitantly. I can turn it on, but then it just hang before it loads the OS, or would shut off by itself. I brought it back for service at Bestbuy, but nothing seemed to fix it. First I thought it's the infamous memory socket/module problem, but it's not fixed even after they solder the module. Then they replaced the motherboard, but it still is not working. It will shut off by itself after about 1 or 2 minutes.
So I don't know if it's the crappy repairs performed by Bestbuy service center, or the battery problem. I'm beginning to suspect it's the battery now. Bestbuy replaced the motherboard of my old laptop (Vaio R505) in the past, and the laptop is still working.
Also, I'm hoping they will honor the no-lemon policy and give me a new laptop, but I've heard 2 versions of the no lemon policy. first, they say it's any 3 repair, then after the 4th one, they will use the no-lemon policy. The 2nd version, it has got to be 3 rapairs of the same problem, which I think is a complete crap. Even worse, those 2 versions come from different people working at the same Bestbuy store. Go figure.

 

I've had mine for a few weeks and have had no problems thus far. Extended battery for the S/FS/FJ series.

~ompa

 

Ompa - where did you purchase your aftermarket battery and how much did you pay for it? How is the life compared to the standard battery? Thanks in advance.

 

Songdog - The power can't affect your battery life. It just supplies DC voltage. Having said that, I vote with Zazonz. Sony is expensive, but the only thing 3rd party folks have to sell is a cheaper price. If you get a bumb Sony product, Sony should stand behind their product and whatever it might do to the rest of your lappy.

3rd party batteries can suffer from short life. In the most extreme case, they can overcharge, leading to overheating and even exploding.

Some people have had good experiences with 3rd party batteries. But when I spent my money, I bought Sony.

 

Got mine off ebay, I think off a company called Titan Batteries. I've gotten 4:10 with constant hard drive use on highest brightness using a Sony FJ170B. Yes, it was risky, but I figured I could buy 3-4 batteries off ebay for the same price as the sony battery. So say each one only lasts a year; ends up being the same price as the sony anyways, if you look at batteries lasting around 3 years.

~ompa

 

To use aftermarket batteries, you must disable the ISBMGR.EXE from the windows task manager or from the start up menu. Sony does this to force us to use expensive Sony OEM parts!

 

It's a great tip to disable the ISMBGR. The key word is "disable", not "delete". When messing around, it's always a good idea to rename files so if you change your mind, you can find them and put them back.

There is another explanation. From Sony's view, they must get a lot of complaints from unknowkedgeable users (the type that never would think to visit this forum) thinking their Sony laptop is defective because they bought cheap batteries. There are even users who decide to use non-OEM parts and refuse to accept responsibility for their decsions. Kudos to Ompa for his attitude, but not everybody who buys from Ebay is willig to accept the possible consequences.

 

Where is that? I don't see it in the Task Manager on my S460. Is this only used to prevent the use of non-Sony battery?