Because the batteries are knackered and new ones aren’t available for old models. Tho’ this does vary by vendor. Chinese knock-off batteries are usually available but carry their own risks.
There are several articles online about how hard it is to store Li-Ion batteries, eg: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batt...
Although the actual cause might be different (I'm no expert) I've become cautious of super cheap Chinese 9-cell batteries.
There are companies who mix-and-match recycled cells and combine them into Ebay batteries out there. Beyond the explosion risk innate to Li-Ion, you're going to get bad battery life with these recycled cells in the very best case.
The cheapest "legitimate" laptop batteries I've found come in the ~$80 mark.
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A good and proper 18650 cell costs $7.50 alone, and you'll need six of them to build a laptop battery.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-INR18650-25R-Rechargeable-Bat...
That's $45 for 6x proper cells straight from the manufacturer. Plus labor, plus all the other parts of the laptop battery (chassis, protection circuit, etc. etc.). Anyone selling for less than $50 is straight up recycled mix-and-match junk. Its the only way you get to $20.
And before you go look up cheaper cells: Ultrafire cells are recycled junk. So ignore all of those listings. Its best to stick with Panasonic / Samsung / other name brands.
So the main issue was not damaging the case? Did you have any references or guides?
I’ve been wanting to order some but obviously don’t want to buy them from some rando off of eBay because I don’t trust that they will
1. actually be new, and
2. that even if they are new they won’t explode in my face
I don't know how easy it is to get them to ship to you, nor how easy it is for individuals to buy from them.
That's exactly how I've done desktop Linux: buy ex-corporate laptops from a reputable refurbisher. You get a quality machine with a good chassis and keyboard, highly-compatible internals (all-Intel) and a decent screen for a good price. Performance doesn't matter if you aren't doing stuff that actually needs the power. Trade-offs are worse power management, and short life-span (I change my Linux laptop every couple of years).
I've picked up i5(2600)/8g/500G laptops for 150 like this on several occasions.
https://www.newegg.com/Laptop-Notebooks/RefurbishedStore/ID-...
1. Battery puked out pretty quickly, so that's $100 (AUD) to fix on a $500 second hand laptop.
2. Some keys stopped working, could be bad luck as laptops have shite keyboards normally.
Both are not necessarily concealed issues BUT this is the kind of shit you are dealing with with second hand laptops and the savings don't seem to justify it, for me anyway. Plus less NSAWare.
The main benefit of buying second hand is the 'good for the environment' feeling it gave me.
While a refurbisher could potentially insert malware, they're not going to do it for the NSA.
Old Thinkpads are also generally well supported by libreboot/coreboot, so that's one less attack vector to worry about.
The big limitations of this model are:
- Display has poor contrast
- Even with discrete GPU, worse performance than modern integrated graphics - it can drive 1080p monitors and play old and some indie games, not much more than that
- Max 8GB of RAM
- No USB 3 (but I have a USB 3 express card which works ok)
- Not great battery life - more recent CPUs are not THAT much faster but they are less power-hungry
Its upsides are:
- Classic thinkpad keyboard and clit mouse (if you're into that)
- Cheap, easy to find refurbished accessories (though I don't know for how much longer this will be true)
For my use (mostly development on Ubuntu), it works pretty well. For computation heavy stuff I remote into a 6-core Dell Precision I got refurbished for $400 (DDR3 ECC RAM is cheap as dirt).
Unless you have particular needs for high-perf CPU or GPU, or want extra-long battery life I'd buy a refurb and throw an SSD in it over buying a brand new laptop every time.
I had to do a lot of trial and error stuff to get it right, but anyway, I was having that spot instance sitting there almost idle, while using up the credits I got for free, so I had no issues with it.
The C5 instances are great for this kind of stuff.
I think that this Pinebook thing would be a perfect replacement for my Chromebook once I drop coffee on it by mistake. However, it would be even better with a x86 like my current Chromebook. It is not that much of a problem, since I remember living happily with my old ARM Chromebook with crouton (before the screen died).
I brought a second one of the same spec for my 5yo daughter out of curiosity. Thinkpads are perfect for kids as they're built much tougher and can take serious amounts of liquid spills on the keyboard.
I have problems with sound and DVD playback on the second one I bought, but screen, speed and general reliability has been great.
Plus I also had an issue with the microphone jack on the first one I bought.
Battery life isn't great (~3hrs), but I typically don't need the battery for that long.
As a developer, I want to make sure my stuff works with ARM, if for no other reason to help the ecosystem a bit.