portables pageant

[stevo1210]

Re: portables pageant

what was funny was month or so after i bought it, my friend over here stevo 1012 got a d400 from his aunt for free... and it was in prettier shape and had the brick and d-bay dvd with it. lucky!

LOL yes, and I'm typing this on it right now! fantastic laptop... battery is on its way out but i use it on AC anyway so i don't care haha. I've used the D-bay DVD drive once to install windows, drivers and apps and it's been shelved away since.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

if you ever need a battery, ebay NOS is your friend.

[everell]

Re: portables pageant

I don't have a laptop, but mother does. Here are pictures...............

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

NOS batteries from eBay are often past their shelf life.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

I don't have a laptop, but mother does. Here are pictures...............

WOW - It's wireless!

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

NOS batteries from eBay are often past their shelf life.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...550#post142550

not always. I thought so as well, but for $27 I got a high capacity NOS battery with 99% of its capacity. they last longer in warehouses then in hot laptops... most "new" batteries likely have been sitting in a warehouse as well.

read the thread and see what you think after that.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

$27 is cheap.
The ones I used to need cost 3 or 4 times that.
I was needing around 20 a year back then.

One dud in 3 kills any savings you'd have on eBay and in my experience your odds of getting bad packs is worse than 1 in 3.
.
Now if I need one I go through a rebuilder.
The good ones use name brand cells with more capacity than original.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

it has a 3 year warranty

and *new* batteries from places like batteries plus are likely the same. NOS. note- the laptop is an 05 model iirc.

one dud in 3 ? your math is off. at $107.99 for a 34w/hr (batteries plus, rayovac cells), I can get 4 of the NOS batteries (which are rated at 42 w/hr) for that cost (27 x4=108).

heck, even with the worst case seen for one (88% capacity), the net capacity is 36.96w/hr, better than 34 w/hr (assuming new cells). 25% of the cost with 109% the capacity (in the worst case seen).

so a *new* battery is pointless. purely pointless for a d400 at this given moment.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

Never heard of "Batteries Plus".
No my math isn't off.
Rayovac are crap.
Spitting out watt/hr numbers is meaningless and pointless without a cell count.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

batteries plus is a walk-in chain that sells every type of battery under the sun.

the original dell batteries:

4 cell (28W/hr)
6 cell (42W/hr)

the rayovac was rated for 34 w/hr, close to a 5 cell (5 cell would be 35w/hr).
that was the cheapest "new" battery that had a known brand... interstate batteries wanted $135 for one (unsure of capacity)

I really do not see how my math is wrong. you would have to get 4 bad ones and not return them under warranty to lose money.

[kc8adu]

Re: portables pageant

Never heard of "Batteries Plus".
No my math isn't off.
Rayovac are crap.
Spitting out watt/hr numbers is meaningless and pointless without a cell count.
.

the nuon brand is the crap from batteries plus.
have had good service from rayovac stuff.when it comes to laptop batts its just the name used under license.
and i would rather rebuild an original pack than buy any aftermarket.that includes my power tools and amateur radio packs too.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

they dumped nuon a couple of years ago. they then changed to rayovac.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

You math is bad because you don't think like a businessman yet.
You lose money [and time, which is money] anytime you have to send something back regardless if you get refunded or not.

Also you apparently don't know what NOS is.
I've looked at the places you've brought up and none are selling NOS batteries.
They are selling rebuilds or reproductions.
- You aren't buying NOS parts.

When you've become a little more 'worldly' with laptop rebuilds [done a greater variety] you'll run across some where buying at places like that isn't an option simply because they don't have the battery you need.
They stock popular items and -list- the others which effectively means they can't always get them.

When that happens your options are NOS [which is New OLD STOCK, not rebuilt or reproduced old models] or to go to a place that rebuilds whatever you have no matter what it is.

Actual NOS -rarely- comes with a warranty other than no DOA and a few days [14 if your lucky] to return it so you have to drop what your doing and get it tested or suck it up later if it's bad after a few cycles.
If it is bad odds are all they will offer is an exchange for another, but the thing with NOS is that if you get a single dud the odds are -all- their stock is in the same condition because it all came from the same warehouse buy-out or liquidation.
IOW: If you get a bad one you will be paying for shipping a few times, probably never get a good one, and it's time to change dealers [which means you may get to do all this again with someone new].
- Buying NOS batteries sucks.
- If you get a good one in one try that's shear luck and you should have bought a lottery ticket that day.

The batteries I usually needed were 6 to 13 cells.
I looked into rebuilding packs myself, but again, you have to make sure you aren't getting NOS with just cells.
[At that time anyway] To get individual cells that were fresh stock at less than $18 per cell you'd have to buy bulk in qtys of 100 or more.
That made it less expensive to go to a pro rebuilder that wasn't limited to certain models.
[Although I just looked and cells are WAY cheaper than 2 or 3 years ago. If I were to get back into rebuilding laptops I might look into building my own packs again.]

The people you are buying from get their rebuilds and re-pops from the people I'm talking about but they only do popular models and they buy in bulk.
Battery Technologies Inc. [big international, corporate] and Powerstream [small shop in Utah] are a couple I've used.
[I got a BTI pack for a Solo 9150 just before I moved to AZ so that's over 5 years ago now and it still works fine.]

The batts I used were all LI and the 'good cells' come from Sanyo or Panasonic.
Rayovac's LI are Chinese.
I -think- they still make their own NiMH in the US, but maybe not.

The LI cells are rated in mAhr @/some voltage, not W/hr.
They used to be around 1600 mAhr [@3.6v] but these days can be up to 3000 mAhr so they last a lot longer.
W/hr is something they came up with to sell packs, not cells, because consumers can't do math to figure out mAhr times x-many cells.
It doesn't tell anything about the cells used or their series/parallel grouping arrangement without a voltage stated.
What I'm trying to get to [with someone chattering in my left ear] is that adding up the W/hr from each cell doesn't necessarily result in a number that reflects the performance of the pack as built.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

the nuon brand is the crap from batteries plus.
have had good service from rayovac stuff.when it comes to laptop batts its just the name used under license.
and i would rather rebuild an original pack than buy any aftermarket.that includes my power tools and amateur radio packs too.

I've seen a Batteries Plus before,,, as I was driving past.

As I said batteries got way cheaper since I last looked.
Maybe I'll rebuild my Makita packs myself this time. They are getting weak.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant



look at that... 0% wear. for that particular seller, he must have stored them in ideal conditions... this one is virtually new.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

And you think that means something?

A "wear level" would be stored in and read from an IC in the battery.
It would simply be a charge/discharge cycle counter.
Doesn't say much at all about condition.

Many, including most older models like yours, don't have that function in the pack IC.
In that case - it's like reading a temp or RPM from a sensor that doesn't exist.

Also would be quite easy for a sleaze ball dealer to fake the sensor output when they install their new IC in building or rebuilding the pack.

.

[ratdude747]

Re: portables pageant

it was sealed in an original dell package. it was real. someone just bought a bunch of spare batteries for a d400 fleet and they never made it out of the warehouse... could even be gov't surplus (they tend to use either dells or toughbooks).

this laptop is not THAT old. the cpu is a donthan, not banias, indicating it was of the later batch.

furthermore, it gives exact capacities for the wear. original capacity is 42000, current is 41950, so less than 1% wear... the chip rounded down.

all evidence points towards genuine battery as far as I can tell.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

Well if the laptop is "not THAT old" then it isn't a NOS battery.
The manufacture will make fresh batteries for several years after a model is out.

What I told you to beware of was NOS batteries.

Then you run of spouting the attributes of your -NOT- NOS battery as if it's some sort evidence contrary to what I said about NOS batteries.

- It isn't.

-

No, capacity isn't what 'wear' means on a battery.
'Wear' is a simple cycle counter.

Either Dell, HP, or both, [and maybe some others] got all kinds of flack [if not sued] over the cycle counters in their batteries a few years ago.
[The 'wear' measurement as it's called in your software.]
They had some firmware [or BIOS feature] that popped up 'battery needs replacement' warnings and some even disabled the battery charging after so many cycles regardless of the actual remaining capacity of the battery. They -claimed- this was to -protect you- from from -somehow- damaging your laptop by using a dead battery. It was actually to sell customers new batteries sooner than needed in aid of making $$.
[Much the same scenario as how printers tell you to replace the cartridge sooner than you need to and quit working when you still have toner left.]
-
That 'wear' indicator in your little program is there as a read-out of that counter mechanism [meaning firmware + IC] - - which only some batteries even have.
The software has that reading to support batteries that have it.
- Yours probably doesn't unless Dell didn't change their ways since all the trouble.
.

[smason]

Re: portables pageant

I don't think it was Dell, though I could be wrong, or perhaps it was low-end units.
I've been supporting an office full of 90 various Dell notebooks for over 7 years. Models we've had over the last 7 years include Latitude C840 D800 D810 D820 D830 4300 6500 and 6510s, and a few assorted Inspirons. I've maybe seen 3 that refused to charge or said "replace battery" and they were definitely failed batteries, not exceeded some count in the chip.
When I say definitely failed, we cracked 'em open and they had one or more bad cells.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: portables pageant

I'm pretty sure Dell was one of them.
The 'big stink' was in the 'late P3 days' and those you support are newer.
- Point was I suspect that cheesy software supports the older models that had it and displays a bogus number for newer ones that don't.

Dell still gets complaints about it on newer models too though, so maybe they do still do it on some models.
http://www.google.com/#q=dell+batter...f87efc6f926f13

Dell is probably better than most other laptop options but that doesn't mean they don't nickle and dime you any way they can.

.