Technology

You don't buy a genuine battery, they are indeed too old. There are third party manufacturers making new batteries for old thinkpads, kingsener and greencell are two. I have kingsener in my homelab X230(Arch) and T440p(NixOS/Silverblue) and am very happy, basically better than new(more recent battery tech).

Me, who uses a 15-year laptop, when seeing you mention yours is very old:

Depending on price I might go for it

I did spend like $40 on a battery for a 10 year old laptop a few years ago so that I could keep using it for troubleshooting a remote network I setup up awhile ago because it's cheaper than a new laptop.

Personally I'd see if you can find a new compatible battery not necessarily an OEM battery though as being new it's probably going to last awhile.

typing from my 2012 MacBook Pro

Yes. Yes I would.

Edit: If it's a 10 year old laptop maybe get an SSD too. SSD, more RAM, and a new battery and this thing is still pretty great for anything but gaming

I'd do it, even with the risk of buying a crap battery, especially with Arch. I'm typing this on a 2014 Lenovo with Arch and XFCE. The main thing it has trouble with is the external 4K display which is a bit sluggish--I turned compositing off to make it a bit better. The battery health is about 80%, last I checked, so I haven't bothered to replace it. (Also, full disclosure, this is effectively my "desktop", so it stays plugged in all the time; I keep the battery charged to 50%.)

But I tend to run computers until they die die, getting a perverse kick out of maximizing the use of old hardware. This machine used to be a Windows machine until it became so sluggish as to be unusable. Putting Linux on it was like dropping the lead weights in a sprint.

I just got old T460, exactly to screwing around with linux. yes, display is scratched, yes touchpad is shiny and battery last barely one hour and unfortunately joints are little bit loose. I was so excited, I installed linux on it right away but got really disappointed by the battery. whole idea of buying this was to be able to be in the living room with my family and still be able to play with linux.

so I ordered new battery, not oem, it costed me 40 euro and if I get 3 hours from it I will be happy.

thinkpads are great, I love the keyboard, linux hardware support is great and you can replace pretty much anything in them. I'm considering buying new trackpad from aliexpress (for $15) and I could even swap display (little bit more expensive).

honestly worst thing about old laptop (particularly one I bought) is that horrible smell of years being owned by chain smoker.

I have a tendency to keep old computers going as long as possible. I've replaced batteries, screens, RAM, hard drives, and cooling fans. I've had pretty decent experience with the batteries. If you go in expecting about 80% of its former life, you probably won't be disappointed. I have a 10 year old machine that still runs great too!

As a Linux toy, I’d absolutely replace it. I have a Zenbook from 2011 that still works fine enough for desktop apps with Mint after a battery swap.

At minimum though, I’d open it up to make sure the battery isn’t a bloated spicy pillow waiting to blow.

For the price of a battery for an old laptop, you could probably find an SBC like a raspberry pi with about the same specs as the laptop. Unless your use case includes portability, it doesn't seem worth it.

Knock off new batteries for old laptops are fairly easy to find on amazon, even. They wont be as good as an official battery of course, but they do the job. A lot of the time refurbished laptops will use this kind if battery.

I’ve got a couple of machines that I put new batteries into not long ago. If it’s solid hardware, throw Linux in there and give it new longevity.

I just got a pretty good deal on an old ThinkPad (think 10 years old now) to use as a beater for screwing with ArchLinux a-

it begins.

I'm typing this on a thinkpad r500 with Q4OS installed. According to the reviews I found online (from 2008), it's got a decent battery life. I would still get a new battery if I felt like this battery wasn't up to snuff.

Someday when you actually get an old laptop, I would recommend getting a decent battery if you want to use it for something other than a doorstop. Until then, I guess you can use that nice shiny thinkpad you're already using.

/s, of course

Yes, certainly. If you are going to be spending money, drop another $20 on an inexpensive new SSD (Kingston A400 for example). It will breathe new life into it.

One of my biggest pet peeves with devices these days is nonremovable batteries. I'm still using my little red GBA SP because I can get replacement batteries.

I will be more nuanced. If it is fast enough yes. If not no. My experience is computers have about a 10 year useful life before speed is a problem.

I bought a new battery for my Asus gaming laptop from 2013 and slapped mint on it, currently my octoprint server (through docker) and bench computer with no complaints. Frankly I probably didn't need to replace the battery as realistically it's not mobile but it Insulates it from power failures I guess. The older hardware works totally fine in Linux, and to me is an easy way to bring new life to old hardware.

All in all I spent $90 on a new battery and an ssd, which I have 0 regrets about either.

I recently bought a compatible non-OEM battery for a very old laptop as the original battery was completely shot and it would only work plugged in, and it really has made it usable again. I guess there's always the risk that it has been sat on a shelf for a while, but if the price isn't bad and you can afford to, I think it's probably worth giving it a go given how degraded your current battery is.

Always worth seeing if there's an online store with a decent return policy if you're concerned about getting a dud, rather than somewhere like eBay!

Edit: I definitely understand your feelings about the wastefulness of laptops though, but at least a replacement battery is likely to keep the laptop going for longer.

Oh, that's actually a thing I'm debating on right now! I bought a Toshiba Satellite L770 the other week for cheap---it's what, 12 year old? Needs a battery replacement because it does the same thing yours does, and I need to upgrade the ram today to 8gb, but otherwise it's in pretty damn good condition,

In the end, I think I'd personally buy a replacement third party battery in case the adapter ever gets broken and you want a good hour to transfer any important files over.

I'm a bit metal, any time a laptop dies I strip it for parts and keep stuff like the 18650 cells. If I had a laptop which desperately needed new batteries, I'd probably find cells in my collection with around the same voltage (or better yet, a parallel pack I can break apart), rip open the laptop's battery, and replace the cells. I don't tend to be on the go very often though, so I've never needed to do that. This is assuming the laptop uses li-ion chemistry, otherwise a lot more work would need to be done. In a pinch, brand new 18650 cells are really cheap

For something that old, unless you were using it as a thin client or something it might be better to use it as eg a home server, that way it doesn't need the battery to be any good because it's plugged in 24/7.

I’ve got a couple of machines that I put new batteries into not long ago. If it’s solid hardware, throw Linux in there and give it new longevity.

No, I wouldn't use a laptop that old at all

This is really "it depends" territory. If it's going to sit in the same place at all times, absolutely not. In fact I'd remove the battery all together.

If I think I'll ever use it on battery where it will need to last longer than ~40 minutes? Sure, if the battery is cheap enough. I'm sure there are battery companies that can refurbish the old battery with new innards at a decent price, making it essentially a brand new battery.

I have, 10 years is old but not completely useless if it's the higher end cpu (the 2 core i5s are basically trash by now).

The batteries worked fine, many are newer (got them off ebay, knockoffs), but also charge cycles and how they are stored tend to matter, if they haven't been used and were kept in decent storage they should have at least 90% capacity. Don't spend too much on them though, and honestly consider just getting an external power bank you can also use with other things you have.

Back when smartphones had easily replaceable batteries, like the LG V10 I bought for my mom, I bought her a new battery after 3 years and it gave it new life.

Now, 10 years is on a different time frame. Personally, I would gauge the price of a replacement battery against how much I paid for the laptop. 10% maybe? Completely arbitrary. $20 replacement battery for a $200 used laptop.

For me, is the charger and maybe the battery too? I'm wondering whether to do it.

Yes. I went on eBay and found a 3rd party replacement for my old laptop's dead battery.

It is a reasonably cheap investment to keep tech from the landfill.

Maybe it will work with something like parsec to a VM you keep at home, I use my phone this way with dex and parsec so I don't have to carry a laptop