The Power And Glory Of The Resurrection
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday June 3, 2003
Notebook batteries have a short life span but you can bring them back from the dead. Charles Wright reports.
You could call it the triumph of the familiar over function. The father of one of our readers had
become attached to his five-year-old AcerNote Lite 370PCX notebook, refusing to be
lured by any so-called advance in technology. However alluring new notebooks might be to other users, he was completely satisfied by the old one, and refused to abandon it.
Alas, it was slowly losing its digital organs. To keep it going, his son had replaced the hard drive, added additional RAM, upgraded the operating system and was now looking at replacing the battery - a 10.8v lithium ion model. At this point, he drew a blank.
Acer spare parts staff informed him they did not stock replacement batteries for the AcerNote Lite. We took this up with Acer management, who said they did not stock batteries for older models because "the cells inside the battery will not last for more than one year" - a sobering thought for notebook buyers.
But what the spare parts department failed to explain is that Acer instead passes the old batteries on to a Melbourne-based company, Hye Trading Power, which refurbishes
batteries for notebooks and PocketPCs.
Hye has refurbished batteries for us in the past and may be the only solution for many notebook owners whose model has been dropped from the manufacturers' inventory. It also could save them a lot of money.
A refurbished notebook battery typically costs $180 to $200. While some manufacturers have dropped the price of their replacement batteries, a new one could be as much as $350 to $450.
Not all batteries can be re-born. While the process installs new batteries, it relies on the re-use of the "supervisory board", which houses the electronic controls.
But roughly 70 per cent of batteries can be recycled, and of those that fail, Hye Trading Power says 25 per cent can be replaced by after-market batteries that are cheaper than the branded versions.
The refurbishing business has thrown up some interesting and disturbing trends. Lithium ion batteries, which were hailed for their ability to avoid the memory effect that shortens the life of NiCad and nickel-metal hydride batteries, are proving to be nowhere near as robust as their predecessors.
Hye's John Chahinian says the company is seeing an increasing number of lithium ion batteries that are failing after only 18 months of service.
How do you maximise the life of the battery - as opposed to the life of the individual charge? Most people keep their notebooks pretty much permanently on the charging device. On the odd occasions when they do travel, they're likely to find that the charge dissipates much more quickly than it ought.
Chahinian recommends that nickel-metal hydride batteries be discharged fully once a month and recharged. And because the lifetime of a battery tends to be dictated by the number of recharging cycles - roughly 300 to 500 - he suggests that notebook owners who keep their computers on mains power should think about removing the battery while it's plugged in - possibly doubling its useful life.
The one reason why you might not want to do that is that the battery does act as a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), protecting your data from power surges or blackouts. Given the price of new batteries, however, you might consider buying a UPS.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald
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