My new toy!

[Joe]

Aria, an IBM ThinkPad 600!

Specs:
6.4GB Harddrive
64MB RAM
300MHz Pentium II

Currently running Windows 98, but I'm looking to upgrade to Slackware or Ubuntu.

He also has a CMOS battery that insists on dying over and over. It makes me sad.

[Blaze]

Did you go dumpster diving?

[Joe]

..!..

[Blaze]

Sorry, I see things like that thrown out every week. 

[Joe]

Mail me one! Or one of their CMOS batteries. :/.

[Chavo]

He also has a CMOS battery that insists on dying over and over. It makes me sad.

Putting extra strain on a relatively sensitive piece of equipment is a bad idea.  Dead batteries can supply intermittent voltage if, but the strain on voltage sensitive hardware isn't worth it.

[Joe]

Huh?

The CMOS battery is dead now. Completely dead. As in NOT working at all. I'd define that not as a battery but as a piece of base hardware and I'm taking it back on Wednesday and requesting an exchange of the CMOS battery (it's not hard at all, once I figured out how to get to it).

[Sidoh]

Huh?

The CMOS battery is dead now. Completely dead. As in NOT working at all. I'd define that not as a battery but as a piece of base hardware and I'm taking it back on Wednesday and requesting an exchange of the CMOS battery (it's not hard at all, once I figured out how to get to it).

Why don't you just buy another battery and put it in? ...

[Joe]

Because the battery is under warranty. I mean, if you bought a laptop and the next day the LCD died, would you simply go buy another laptop and leave it at that?

[Sidoh]

Because the battery is under warranty. I mean, if you bought a laptop and the next day the LCD died, would you simply go buy another laptop and leave it at that?

What kind of question is that?  I said you should go buy one, not leave it alone.  Also, that's sort of like comparing the engine of a car breaking the first day you get it to a rusty door handle.  One can be fixed easily and cost effectively without using the warranty.  You guess which one.

You seriously want to go through all of the trouble of the warranty process just to replace a battery?  You could just as easily go to Radio Shack, buy a battery for $5 and put it in yourself.

[iago]

Because the battery is under warranty. I mean, if you bought a laptop and the next day the LCD died, would you simply go buy another laptop and leave it at that?

What kind of question is that?  I said you should go buy one, not leave it alone.  Also, that's sort of like comparing the engine of a car breaking the first day you get it to a rusty door handle.  One can be fixed easily and cost effectively without using the warranty.  You guess which one.

You seriously want to go through all of the trouble of the warranty process just to replace a battery?  You could just as easily go to Radio Shack, buy a battery for $5 and put it in yourself.

Replacing a CMOS battery in a laptop is a lot more troublesome than replacing it in a desktop.  If that laptop isn't mission-critical to his life, and he can live without it during the warranty process, then he might as well take it back. 

[Sidoh]

Replacing a CMOS battery in a laptop is a lot more troublesome than replacing it in a desktop.  If that laptop isn't mission-critical to his life, and he can live without it during the warranty process, then he might as well take it back. 

Yeah, I realize that.  I still think it would be a trivial process -- especially since he said he's already located it.

(it's not hard at all, once I figured out how to get to it).

[Joe]

Yeah, you take a panel off the bottom (very easy) and it's crazy-glued to the mobo (not on any wires or anything) with a pos/neg wire going out and plugging in next to a stick of RAM. Yeah, it's very easy to do, but the battery isn't the size of a desktop CMOS battery, nor the same design (it doesn't just *pop* in like a desktop one, it's got wires coming out of it) so it may be considerably more expensive. But yeah, I suppose I probably should hit Radio Shack for convinence, as we have one in Baraboo and it'd save me a drive to Madison and probably be cheaper, after gas is accounted for.

EDIT -
Looks *really* cheap. Clicky.

[Joe]

I bought one off ebay for ~$3 plus ~$3 shipping and it was apparently DOA. $6 was cheap enough for me that I wasn't going to bother with sending it back. I called up the place and talked to a guy about it (a human answered the phone right away, small businesses are awesome) and talked to him about it. He said they should have them in stock next week. I also explained my new DOA paranoia (in different words, of course) and he said it'd be fine to pop one out of the box and try it out before purchasing, just to make sure it worked properly. So yeah, aria is dead for a week or so and then hopefully it'll be functioning properly. Which means I need to find my 20ft LAN cable..

[Chavo]

Why the $@&* would you think buying a single battery on ebay was a good idea?