A heads-up to anyone running old laptops; buy genuine replacement batteries while they’re available!
I have an aging XPS13 and of course, Dell have discontinued the battery line. Opened it up one day and every cell had puffed out. It took buying a couple of fakes before finally finding a decent reseller on eBay who stocked what I needed. The fake batteries were not recognised by Dell’s hardware detection system thing, I imagine lots of other manufacturers might implement the same feature.
It’s often too late to realize it’s non repairable. When reviews first come out, no one reviews the drm on components. Even those teardown sites only cover how hard it is to open up a device but don’t cover if a part is drm’d until moths or years later. Because there is no way to know until 3rd party parts come out and they don’t work.
You will eventually have to replace it when there are no replacement batteries. Get one that’s focused on repairability. Then you can basically keep it forever
Given how dell AC adapters are the only ones that I know of with an extra wire that functionally just acts as drm, it’s not surprising they do the same with batteries.
Even HP’s elitebook I got (6th Gen Intel CPUs) work no problem with third party batteries and HP has all of the drm printer nonsense. Curiously if their modern elitebook have battery drm yet.
A heads-up to anyone running old laptops; buy genuine replacement batteries while they’re available!
I have an aging XPS 13 and of course, Dell have discontinued the battery line. Opened it up one day and every cell had puffed out. It took buying a couple of fakes before finally finding a decent reseller on eBay who stocked what I needed. The fake batteries were not recognised by Dell’s hardware detection system thing, I imagine lots of other manufacturers might implement the same feature.
Or don’t buy from manufacturers that do this
It’s often too late to realize it’s non repairable. When reviews first come out, no one reviews the drm on components. Even those teardown sites only cover how hard it is to open up a device but don’t cover if a part is drm’d until moths or years later. Because there is no way to know until 3rd party parts come out and they don’t work.
I’m buying framework which explicitly has repair as a goal
Yea, but what if you already have a laptop from such a manufacturer?
Good luck soldier!
You will eventually have to replace it when there are no replacement batteries. Get one that’s focused on repairability. Then you can basically keep it forever
Yes that’s a good tip, but the OP comment was focused on people who already have a laptop
Given how dell AC adapters are the only ones that I know of with an extra wire that functionally just acts as drm, it’s not surprising they do the same with batteries.
Even HP’s elitebook I got (6th Gen Intel CPUs) work no problem with third party batteries and HP has all of the drm printer nonsense. Curiously if their modern elitebook have battery drm yet.