A Slightly Expensive Mistake With a Laptop Battery

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1276635584.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I think cautionary tales are a good way to learn, so here's one for you: several years back, I bought a Toshiba M50 laptop for my wife. It worked well enough for her needs, and a few years later I sold it to my younger sister who was looking for a basic computer. She's been using it ever since, but of course by now the battery can't hold a charge longer than a few minutes. She was complaining it was even slower than normal, so I took a look, cleared out some junk and a few virii (Windows XP...sigh) and brought it back up to speed (such that it is). <MORE /></p><p>I also decided to be a nice big brother and buy her a new battery - I was surprised they were only about $50, which is much cheaper than the $130 or so I dropped on a battery for my XPS M1330 a year ago. So I found the battery for the M50, ordered it, and when it arrived I quickly tried to insert it...and the battery wouldn't quite fit. I thought "Damn cheap batteries not made to spec, guess I need to give it a little shove here."</p><p>I managed to get it inserted, but the laptop wasn't reporting it was recharging the battery. The next day I ended up calling the battery company, and they confirmed that I'd ordered the wrong laptop battery. Toshiba had several different versions of the M50, and bizarrely, they decided to use slightly different batteries in all of them - even though from a casual glance, they looked identical. I ordered the correct battery, shipped back the old one, and waited for the RMA credit to be put back on my VISA.</p><p>Well, as you can tell from the photo above, I managed to damage the battery by trying to force it to fit. The company quite rightly refused to give me a credit because of my boneheaded move. And now I know two things: make sure when ordering a laptop battery you get <em>exactly </em>the right one, and if a battery doesn't fit easily in a laptop, <em>don't force it</em>.</p><p>Got any laptop battery stories of your own to share?</p>

[The Yaz]

I've got a good one for you...

A company I used to work for had purchased multiple Toshiba laptops. They varied in model and depending on the request, some had extended batteries as well.

I was in a meeting with the senior managers. My laptop had an extended battery AND I had beeen able to order the quick charger for it. The CEO came into the meeting with his slimline and asked if anyone had a power supply he could use. I was the only one there with a supply in the bag.

He plugged his laptop in, and five minutes later we all heard a snap/hiss and a crack! His laptop's battery had literally popped and oozed all over the conference table...

Needless to say, the next day senior management started a policy of ordering Dell laptops (because their sales team told us the power supplies work with all of their laptops). ;)

Steve

[Jason Dunn]

He plugged his laptop in, and five minutes later we all heard a snap/hiss and a crack! His laptop's battery had literally popped and oozed all over the conference table...Needless to say, the next day senior management started a policy of ordering Dell laptops (because their sales team told us the power supplies work with all of their laptops). ;)

Whoa! :eek: I can't believe Toshiba would be so insane to have the plugs be physically compatible, but the voltage/amperage not be. That's awful.

Honestly, I try to stay far away from Toshiba notebooks - their netbooks interest me, but in general I've found their notebooks to be pretty sluggish and poorly designed.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

The thing I heard about Toshiba is that they source for ODMs and then purchase the design. Unlike the other big names who use OEMs and have their design in-house, which I suppose allows standardisation for things like batteries and power plugs.

[Jason Dunn]

The thing I heard about Toshiba is that they source for ODMs and then purchase the design. Unlike the other big names who use OEMs and have their design in-house, which I suppose allows standardisation for things like batteries and power plugs.

How very interesting - that makes a lot of sense, and frankly explains a lot about Toshiba laptops. :rolleyes:

[The Yaz]

Well to be fair, it happened six years ago. I would hope their current design is better now :rolleyes:

But that's not the worst thing that happened with the Toshiba laptops. Our Marketing Director tended to push the keys & track button agressively in the heat of production meetings.

During one meeting he pushed down on the track button so hard it popped off of the keyboard, bounced off the screen and hits him in the eye. He jumps up and away from the table hitting an engineer with a cup of coffee. The coffee spills on the table shorting out our (one and only) analog projector.

It shorts out and starts smoking. Someone starts yelling FIRE and an employee pulls the fire alarm. We now need to empty the whole building and wait for the fire department. When the fire marshall was told what happened, he shakes his head and says "That's why I use a Sony laptop, it has this new thing called a track pad. I'm telling you, soon every laptop is going to have one."

Who knew firemen were such techies at heart :D

[Joel Crane]

A friend brought one of those awful HP DV5/7 series laptops to me very recently that "wasn't charging the battery." I plugged it in, and it wasn't charging all right, it wouldn't even power on! A quick check with a multimeter proved that the AC adapter wasn't working, so I grabbed an $8 eBay one for him.

A few days later he texted me, "Is it possible to get a virus from a new power adapter?"