----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: Leaving computers on...and notebook batteries.
> Andrew Burton wrote:
>
> I compared the two batteries. Physically they are almost identical. The
> connector slot (which can be seen in the picture here:
>
http://www.digi163.com/battery/DELL-laptop-battery/Dell-Latitude-C610-batte… )
is slightly different on the newer one. It's the same design but the
> gaps between the connectors is visibly smaller,
only by maybe a
millimetre
or so. The
voltages are the same so I'll give it a try over the weekend.
Yup, give it a try. odds are it'll work just fine. Long as it fits, it
should work.
Ok :)
I have a similar replacement situation for my older
macbook pro. Not
made by apple, but I've tried it and it works just fine despite the
higher mAh rating, just like yours.
BTW, if you're not going to travel with the notebook much, you can still
use the old battery even if it only lasts 5 minutes. In this case,
it'll work as if it were a UPS. The reason I say this is that if you
keep a battery in a notebook and you don't discharge it once in a while
you'll find it will die pretty quickly. If you're going to travel
around with it, use the new battery. Make sure you charge up the new
battery before putting it away, and something like every 3-6 months you
should pop it back in and recharge it. If the charge goes completely to
zero (deep discharge) the battery is dead and will never be recoverable.
Thanks, I now know what deep discharge is :)
I don't know about dells, or that particular one, but I killed the
battery in my old macbook pro two years ago by leaving the machine on
24x7 for about a month (I was inbetween jobs, previously to that, the
machine traveled with me). After that, it could barely hold half an
hour - usually less, and it would power off before fully discharging -
despite resetting the PMU and doing a few discharge/charge cycles. Odds
are dells are better than this, for sure Thinkpads do not have this
issue, but old Macbook pros with the swapable battery suffer from this.
I've removed the battery from that machine completely now as I don't use
it anywhere nearly as much. But every 3-6 months I recharge it and
allow it to discharge, then recharge it again just to make sure I keep
it alive.
Ok. Thanks for the info and tips.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk