Laptop battery 6 cell/9cell

Cardew

Does anyone know if the 6 cell and 9 cell batteries for a Dell Inspiron 6400 are physically interchangeable?

Niftydigits - your PM box is full!

Nilrem

I've got a feeling they are, from memory Dell offer the 9cell as an upgrade, so I suspect the battery is physically the same size, but the 6 cell may not use up the full space available inside the batteries outer casing.
.
It's the sort of thing where it would be much more expensive for the manufacturer to make two different basic chasis/shells for the whole machine, than it is to make one of the parts bigger than it needs to be.

Cardew

Nilrem wrote: »

I've got a feeling they are, from memory Dell offer the 9cell as an upgrade, so I suspect the battery is physically the same size, but the 6 cell may not use up the full space available inside the batteries outer casing.
.
It's the sort of thing where it would be much more expensive for the manufacturer to make two different basic chasis/shells for the whole machine, than it is to make one of the parts bigger than it needs to be.

The battery currently fitted is Type GD761 - 11.1v/53Wh and this is shown a 6 cell here:

http://www.upgrademaster.com/li-ion-battery-41270/part_number/GD761.html

It fit snuggly in the compartment with no spare room.

This shows the GD761 as 9 cell.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/ctg/Dell-GD761-9-Cell-Laptop-Battery-/97990440

My gut feeling is that they are interchangeable.

Nilrem

Aye, what I mean is the battery casing may be identical for the two different types, but one (the six cell* one), might have empty air/dummy cells/some sort of filler in it.
You can even do this at home in a way, as you can buy D cell adaptors, that let you slip an AA battery into it, then use that AA battery in something that needs a D cell (the AA won't last as long, but it's often easier than keeping spare D's as well as AA's).

It would be a fairly normal way to make it possible for one part that may not need to be as big, fit in the same place as something that does need the extra size, and that is something the likes of Laptop makers love, as it means they don't need to change the battery compartment on the models if they need the better battery


*Almost all battery packs tend to be made up of industry standard "cells" (ranging from standard AA batteries, to various different shapes/sizes**), and one of the options is to have "dummy" cells if you make a different capacity battery, or the technology changes (and you can user smaller/cheaper cells and get the same capacity) but want or need the battery unit to remain the same size.

**The likes of cheap cordless drills often use a solder tag variant of the AA battery inside the casing, and the likes of Makita use the same casing but with different battery types depending on what you want (so you can buy a Makita drill with a nicad battery pack, but upgrade it to NMH, or even I think Lithium as the battery packs are interchangeable in the drill).