Advice on Laptop battery replacement please.

Avoriaz

A friend of mine asked me this question:

“The battery in my Dell Inspiron laptop (1501) hasn’t worked for ages. I’ve checked with the recall website and it isn’t one of the faulty ones, so I guess it’s just worn out. I see they cost well over £100 on the official Dell website, but is there a cheaper place to buy one of these? I remember when I got a cheap battery for my mobile phone, it lasted a very short time, so I don’t want to go to one of these cheapo battery suppliers unless you know of a good one I could use.”

I replied with:

“Are you certain that it is the battery that has failed and not something in the laptop power supply? Will it power the laptop for a short while, even just a minute or so?

Laptop batteries are notorious for not lasting very long and Original Manufacturer replacements are usually very expensive.

I have found a number of Ebay suppliers selling your battery for under £16 including delivery. It is probably worth taking a chance on one of those. Even if it only lasts a year it is well worth it. Even if you have to buy one every year you will never spend anywhere near £100 in total.”

She then replied with:

“When I turn on the laptop I get a message up saying ‘The system cannot recognise the battery. It will be unable to charge this battery’. Yes, it will power the laptop for a few minutes , but then dies so I always use it with the power cable.
It is the original Dell battery but, of course, I have had the laptop for three or four years now. I agree, it would be worth my while to get the cheaper battery – I only ever need it when I go to France.”


As she rarely uses the laptop on battery, am I right in suggesting an inexpensive £16 battery from a well-established ebay supplier? I do know that cheap batteries can quickly wear out even if rarely used. But at £16 a go she can afford to buy one every year or so and still be better off.

Should I advise her to regularly discharge and recharge the battery?

Thanks.

fwor

I would go with the £16 one. It can be a ~bit~ of a gamble, but the ones that I've bought have generally been quite good. The quality of cell may not be quite as good as the originals, but typically good enough these days.

Be aware though that quite a lot of these get shipped directly from HK/China (even though the listing says located in the UK), so can take a while to arrive.

Assuming it's a LiIon battery - no there is nothing to be gained by running it flat. If she wants to keep it in good condition, avoid fully discharging and run the laptop off the mains with the battery removed until she actually needs to use it. Store fully or nearly fully charged in a cool dry place.

Notmyrealname

I buy all my Dell batteries from powercell-uk on Ebay. Not the cheapest but they work every time. Also the seller is actually in the UK in Nottingham - I have collected in person. I usually get the order delivered the following day or day after at the latest.

"When I turn on the laptop I get a message up saying ‘The system cannot recognise the battery. It will be unable to charge this battery’. "

This is a message you can get with some of the Dell batteries bought on Ebay. Dell are very very fussy and the laptop polls a chip in the battery. If it doesn't get the right information back it will say there isn't one connected or that it can't recognise it and it will not charge it. Likewise with the chargers.

crystal9

i had to but 1 last year for our samsung laptop and got this one here

HTH you so far it has been brilliant (7 months)

Pikeyp

My brother-in-law recently bought a replacement battery for his Toshiba laptop (old-ish model!) from here ... http://www.power-supplier.co.uk/

He was happy enough with it!

fwor

Pikeyp wrote: »

My brother-in-law recently bought a replacement battery for his Toshiba laptop (old-ish model!) from here ...

He was happy enough with it!

He may have been lucky, but I would not buy there. It's a company that purports to be UK based, but the domain is registered in China, and the only way to contact them is either via a web form or a Google mail email address!

The "About Us" wording is also pretty odd.

It may be fine when things go well, but is likely to get difficult if anything goes wrong...