M11x R1 battery failure?

Hey, so I've had my R1 since March '10. I went on a trip this summer without my laptop so it was fully discharged for a little over a month. Now that I'm back at school, it can't make it through one 1:15 min class. It will go from about 78%-6% in 3 seconds. I never had this sudden discharge problem before I left on my trip.

My power usage during class is absolute minimum, no overclock, integrated gpu, no wireless, lowest brightness and so on.

What's the deal? I've had nothing but happiness with my little Alien, broken hinges aside which were fixed Johnny on the spot under warrantee.

I'm hesitant to buy a new battery just yet because this is so strange. Any thoughts?

 

And I know batteries degrade charge over time. My battery program reported 28% wear which is reasonable, but this behavior is nuts.

 

I had my battery fail after ~12 months of use, the batteries that come in the m11x really do not like to have full charge/discharge cycles, so the times you did that while you were traveling probably did the one you have in.

If you are still under warranty just call them up, explain what is going on and they should send you a new battery.

 

Yeah, my battery lasted about 13 months, my friends lasted about the same and my other m11x has a bad battery too.

Its sad that these batterys only live for about a year and there is no cheap aftermarket for them

But I guess that means that I can pick up r1's for cheap

 

Yeah, its just so weird because my monster(HDX9000) has had a more steady degradation in battery life and its 3 years old. It didn't just decide to tank one day.

Oh well, I bought a replacement from well. Be here soon I hope

 

I have an R1, and my battery was performing well, (over an hour when overclocked), until one day it just kind of died, and now behaves incredibly erratically (I can use it for 30 mins on 0%, but it may only last 5 mins on 100%)
Now that I think about it it was right after I got the screen and hinges replaced.

Here's another (older) thread reporting very similar issues:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/528964-m11x-r1-battery-failure-am-i-first-2.html

and all the batteries have seem to have failed straight after having the screen replaced or a service. Could just be a coincidence, but it does seem a bit strange.

 

Just as Crozone said, I also have an R1 and mine died after 10 days without warning but my screen and hinges were never replaced...

 

10 days? That's an incredibly short time for a battery to give out. Good news is that it's definitely covered under the warranty.... but 10 days is really fast.
Mine gave out suddenly after a about a year (just after the warranty ended :/). The thing was it had steady wear, no signs of issues, and then all of a sudden *dead*. I've gone through a few Li+ batteries in different laptops, and none have ever done this. From what I can see the M11x has a custom made Samsung battery, so its possible there's a fault with the onboard electronics.

In any case, I don't think there's a solution other than ordering a new battery...

 

yeah I had my battery changing from ~75% to 6% in the middle of my class, then suddently switched back to ~75%

though my m11x is 3 months old

 

I've been through a few other threads now and this is a bit ridiculous on Dell's part the almost perfect timing for battery failures. And that they don't degrade like every other battery, but just decide to stop functioning.

I've also had a new development. My new battery should hopefully be coming in tomorrow. Now though, I was just plugging in my power cord before class, and the small end of the brick that goes to the laptop, the flexible end piece that comes out, started crackling. I looked close up, and there is plastic missing in a near perfect circle under the rings, showing bare metal.

Now I'm worried about sparking an electrical fire either in my classroom, or God forbid, in my apartment(while sitting on my carpet) while I'm ASLEEP!

Dell and I are going to have a chat when I get home. Out of warranty or not, this is nuts.

 

Same problem here, mine died and new battery on the internet is 200$ Fail.

 

same thing happened to me I was going to replace it but it costs about $200. (out of warranty)

Im selling it as soon as i wipe everything.

 

This is nothing new. Batt failure complaints happen each time a model comes out. I recall the E series from dell had the same complaints. As did some Acer models.

Laptop manufacturers to not promise multiple years out of batteries for a reason.

It might suck but its not unique to Dell or the M11x.

 

The unique thing is the price fror new battery. Mine from hp costs 30buck, if it dies today i won't hesitate to but new, but 200buck is f... expensive.

 

hmmm...anyone try to open one of these up and replacing the li-po cells? My battery is still working great but as soon as they fail im opening it up...

 

I've thought about this. I actually tried it once, years ago, but I was just dinking around and not being careful. It started to heat up rapidly. I hurriedly took it all apart.

Word of advice: Don't dink around. Be careful.

 

OEMs get this wrong on occasion and the M11x design does NOT allow for quick battery removal so in the event of failure you might be looking at a dead system, injury, fire, or some combination.

DELL Alienware M11x Laptop Battery,UK Europe batteries
Cheap Alienware M11x 14.8V,8 cell laptop batteries,battery for dell Alienware M11x
Dell Alienware M11x battery, Cheap Dell Alienware M11x replacement battery

etc. I have not tried any of those.

In a pinch maybe even an external batt pack. Wouldnt be worse than having CDRom on desktop

 

There are a few "refurb" batteries on ebay for 60 bucks... not sure how good they are, but they are OEM batteries that have been "refurbished"

 

I got, oh absolute maximum here, 13 months before mine up and died. Not excesisve use, the only factor I can think of that did it was it being plugged in and the charger block running hot whenever it was on charge.

I attempted on several occassions to speak to Dell to complain as dying a month out of warrenty is shocking, I had on occassion stuck up for them too. I got told by several different employees (UK side of things though same call centres I would guess) that basically tough , your warrenty is out. After getting some real dumb answers like try it without the battery!! (plus how hard it is to remove etc) I gave up.

I did want to send off a written complaint to Dell but they made it near impossible to get an email or postal address whenever I asked, though my personal favourite was along the lines of 'oh jsut put the complaint in to the tech team, they'll pick it up' oh really the same tech team who had not so succintly told me to bugger off several times.

It's put me really off ever buying a dell again, specially as the best I can find is £100 ish for a new battery on a laptop that cost me £1000+

 

My R2's old battery died and exhibited similar simptoms, however, I was fully using it for the workday, and it came home often around 10%, leaving in the morning at 100% or so.

 

This is not a "Dell" problem nor a new problem.

 

How about this for a source?

Dell 8p6x6 battery | Dell 8p6x6 laptop battery | wholesale Dell 8p6x6 battery

Anyone have any experience with these guys?

 

I bought my laptop in November (it was a Cyber Monday purchase) and the battery died on me two weeks ago.

So my battery didn't even last 10 months. I used my computer better than 75% of the time plugged in over that period of time. No lie. No exaggeration.

So I am pretty disappointed to say the least. Especially considering the laptop cost me less than $600, but a replacement battery (that I shouldn't expect will last more than a year, right?) will cost greater than $200.

Big bummer.

The upside (for me at least) is that I use my computer better than 75% of the time plugged in - so I'm not missing much computer action... LOL, but still - this damned battery should have done better than it did.

 

Just out of interest, does anyone know if the battery is covered under dell's extended warranty or is it capped at 1 year? I really don't want to spend
$200 on a battery when the laptop itself will be obsolete in less than a year...

 

I still hold that lappies have a 3 year span and should still be usable. New OS releases can alter that tho. At home we can usually get more

It was obsolete when you got it

 

i understand your pain but most of short battery life is based off user habits. the rare occasion if it being a part failure, but they do happen.

you can read about how to "take care" of your L-ion battery all over the web. the practices are not specific to the M11x. but as a general rule try not to top off your batt every time it goes down a few percent.

for exmp:

you use your laptop for 30min on a full batt and then shut it down. don't plug it back in... just leave it un-plugged or you will waste a charge cycle. even if you decide to use it on your charger the next time you use it, set the battery to not charge... constantly topping it off this way is what will kill your battery fast with out even really ever using it.

in fact this is why the M11x has the ability to stop the battery from charging. even when you leave the M11x plugged in 24/7. i the battery is set to charge it will top off your battery every few days or so. as the battery is naturally designed to drain over time on purpose. after it gets so low (say 95%?) it will top off the battery again... and do it over and over. wasting cycles...

if you have been in fact "taking care" of your battery then you just have a bad one... which sux...

more PC companies need to make better battery controller circuits so this doesn't happen as often.

 

They just need to make it so that when you set in the bios to not charge, it stays like that till you change it. I have the hardest time keeping that option set due to the fact that my wife uses my laptop while Im at work. If she turns it off, then back on... it charges

 

Too many examples where that doesn't work. I do it fairly "wrong" and still have usable batt.

There is no magic pill or method that can be relied on and is difficult to prove IMO. This is because the best case is still fairly short.

Failures in less than a year are less likely no matter what you do which to me explains warranty term. Getting more than 2 years of good batt run time happens but there are no promises regardless of method. The % of drop by then will be evident and makes claims difficult which again explains common warranty terms (to me)

 

I forsee in the near future we will have a supply of batteries. The m14x uses the same one as the m11x... so thats 3 generations of m11x and 1 of the m14x with the same battery. Only a matter of time before some aftermarket company figures this out.

 

the science of the tech is not guess work... yes some batches of batteries will have better yields than others but the science of how the cells work is still the same.

the cells only have so many operation cycles before they reduce to a capacity thats barley usable. its a chemical thing that you can read up on if you feel like learning something about it.

but regardless what you feel is a correct answer to inform ppl about dose not change the fact that using the practices i mentioned above with allow you to get "more usable life" out of your battery than not.

 

Agreed, just not wanting to imply that a batt dead in less than a year would have gone 3

Put it this way:
If fail in less than a year its likely defective
If fail after three years you have a really good battery

The margin effected by behavior is pretty narrow unless your use is extreme. In those cases I suspect they need to use the laptop a particular way and will not be able to follow best practices anyway. To that end there is some contradiction anyway on what "best" is.

Most of us fall in between. We get about 1-2yrs with decent use (avail hrs) and a sharp decline after

I'm mostly pointing out that the battery behavior is not unique to Dell or how much the computer cost.