IBM Travel batteries

I was checking out the price of the batteries that fit into the UltraBay to replace the cddrive, and they appear to be pretty cheap on ebay in the range of 40-50 bucks for a new one. How much extra battery life can one expect out of using one on a P-M laptop like the z60m?

 

Not a lot. The modular battery is only two cells, but if you get the larger battery and modular you should some good time. I get about six hours on my nine cell and modular on medium settings.

 

Look at this:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=74&part=full&page=11

It's for the T43, but results should be similar.

 

lol, under 30 minutes? christ i will just buy a spare 6 cell to go with my main 9 cell.

 

this is an interesting alternative backup battery solution that Brian reviewed a couple of months back

APC Universal Notebook Battery Review: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2614

it's good if you have multiple notebooks because it'll work with all of them as a spare.

just a thought, might not be your cup of tea.

 

If it sticks a bit out of the back I don't mind, but not attaching to the device and being another device all together won't really fly with me.

 

Thinkpad Advanced Ultrabay Battery

Battery Types: 3 Cell Li-Polymer
Battery Voltage: 10.8 V
Power: 2.7 Amp/Hr

So it's a 29WHr capacity battery. Compare that to the 56WHr 6-cell and 84WHr 9-cell. So you'll get about half the battery life as you would an extra 6-cell.

 

Looks more promising now. The T series one seems to be a tad smaller.

 

Guess you haven't been paying attention to what you read.

 

Not sure I follow you. First Benchmark

With 9 cell/and ultrabay battery = 3:37
With 9 cell/no ultrabay battery = 3:08

Seems as though under a higher load it doesn't help much with providing any additional power. You only see a decent gain when the thing is running bare minimum.

 

I guess I also don't pay much attention. I was looking at the comparison with the 6-cell, where it seems that the ultrabay battery gives a big boost (over an hour). But then again you already have a 9-cell, so maybe to you the 9-cell benchmarks are more relevant.

Strange that it gives a bigger boost to the 6-cell over the 9-cell. I'd think that the total battery time should just add together. I wonder why it's the way it is.

 

What you do is:

When your 6cell battery is about to run dry you slam your ultrabay battery into the computer, let it run until it, as well, is almost dry, then you replace the 6cell bat with your backup 9cell battery. You should get some 6, 7 hours by doing that...or even more depending on what you've got running

 

I don't see what the big hubub is about. Its an additional 3 cells. So no, its not going to last as long as your 6 cell, it'll last about half that long. Look at the 6cell w/ultra bay vs the 9 cell w/o. Woh, their times are just about equal, I wonder why? (sarcasm)

Basically, if you don't use a DVD drive, and you don't want to carry extra stuff with you, this will give you added life. Don't have to worry about hot swapping, will keep the form factor without having a battery jut out the back, etc.

 

Don't think of "cells" as any direct form of capacity. Some cells can be around 30mAh, while others can be the size of buckets.

3 cells in one battery != 3 cells in another battery.

The only reason the talk of cells come about is because you need to stack multiple cells together to increase voltage. To get 10.8 volts, you need 3 cells connected in a series. These cells could be the size of the batteries inside a bluetooth hands free headset, or they could be the size of soda can what you might find in a hybrid vehicle one day.