Used laptops are wonderful... except when you need batteries
Sun 04 May 2025 by R.L. DaneWhen I was a kid, a new computer cost the equivalent of $3,000 in today's money, and a five year old computer was basically a dinosaur.
Nowadays you can get a brand new computer for $200 or less, and a ten-year-old computer can still be a viable daily-driver. You can often buy quite nice six-or-seven-year-old-computers for $100 or less, and a very nice laptop of five years old or so can be had for around $300.
THIS IS AMAZING
There is, however, one eentsy weentsy little catch.
Depending on the age and model of the laptop you buy used, it will either come with a rather aged and somewhat worn-out battery, or no battery at all. No problem, you say, there are plenty of places to buy new batteries for quite cheap!
Wellll, yes, but not quite.
You see, batteries for older systems are almost always third-party aftermarket batteries, and they almost invariably suck. Of the three batteries I own for my Thinkpad X200t, one lasts about half an hour, one lasts about two hours, and the newest one might just barely last four hours before it peters out. That's even after I replaced the energy-sucking spinning HDD with a power-efficient SSD.
Not great.
On my Thinkpad X260, the situation is even more dire—*cough*—hilarious. The internal battery (original, old) will last a couple hours or so, and the external battery (aftermarket) will last two and a half to three hours. Now it reports about 10 hours of battery life estimated, but as soon as the battery percentage dips below 60%, it will rapidly drain to zero in about five minutes and die, switching over to the internal battery (if I'm lucky).
It's so tragicomic, I actually tooted about this:
#ThirdParty #Thinkpad #Batteries: A Tragedy in Four Minutes 🤣
2025-04-21 22:25 Battery 1: Not charging, 92%; Battery 2: Discharging, 58%, 02:34:47 remaining; 8.117 W; uptime: 5 days, 16:552025-04-21 22:26 Battery 1: Not charging, 92%; Battery 2: Discharging, 50%, 01:16:18 remaining; 12.951 W; uptime: 5 days, 16:562025-04-21 22:27 Battery 1: Not charging, 92%; Battery 2: Discharging, 43%, 03:25:46 remaining; 5.02 W; uptime:5 days, 16:572025-04-21 22:28 Battery 1: Not charging, 92%; Battery 2: Discharging, 36%, 03:13:20 remaining; 5.138 W; uptime: 5 days, 16:582025-04-21 22:29 Battery 1: Discharging, 92%, 01:28:51 remaining; Battery 2: Not charging, 0%; 9.36 W; uptime: 5 days, 16:59WHO FEELS MY PAIN??? LET ME HEAR YOU!!!! 🤣🤣
—Me
So, I thought, instead of buying a used laptop today and scrounging around for a sub-standard replacement battery, I'd just buy a new, genuine lenovo battery today, and buy the accompanying laptop used in five years or so.
And of course, being 2025, the website is super user-friendly and easy to navigate, right?
HA! Here's about how it went:
A dramatization:
Me: "Hey lenovo dot com, can you show me which thinkpads have batteries available? I don't want to have to scour every possible replacement battery to see which ones are for thinkpads, just help me find a decent replacement battery for a modern Thinkpad. And can you make it kinda snappy? I don't want to wait all day waiting for your page to load fifteen human-centipede JS frameworks."
Lenovo dot com: "Hahahahaha! E chu ta."
Me
--___--
Welp, that sucks.