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May 05, 2017

ASUS M70V Battery

The batteries in laptop computers are expensive (a quick review of prices at Lenovo.com shows they range from $119 to $179), and like any battery, they have a limited lifespan. When it comes time to replace the battery inside your laptop computer, you may be tempted to save a few bucks and buy a replacement from a company other than the one that made the computer. In a widely reported story, someone in Ohio purchased a battery for their ThinkPad laptop from a company called Shentech rather than directly from Lenovo or IBM (in 2005, IBM sold the ThinkPad line of laptops to Lenovo). No doubt they paid less than IBM or Lenovo would have charged. When I checked today, a battery for a T40 ThinkPad that Lenovo sells for $119 is only $65 at Shentech. Was it a bargain? Not at all; the battery caught on fire.

The story made news not because of the fire but because the battery, bearing an IBM logo, was a fake (allegedly). After examining the faulty battery, IBM purchased additional batteries from Shentech, and they too were (allegedly) fakes. Needless to say, IBM is suing Shentech (that they list a Post Office box and no phone number on the Contact Us page of their Web site doesn't inspire confidence).Unfortunately, the laptop battery igniting in flames was not, in and of itself, newsworthy. After all, last year there were a slew of battery recalls. The big story was Dell recalling 4.2 million batteries made by Sony, but overall approximately 10 million Sony batteries used in machines from Apple, Sony, Lenovo/IBM, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Sharp, and Dell were recalled. In May of 2005 Apple recalled iBooks and PowerBooks with batteries made by LG Chem of South Korea. Lenovo/IBM has also recalled Sanyo batteries. It must be hard to make a safe lithium ion battery.The lesson here is to only buy replacement batteries from the company that made the computer. Off-brand batteries are more likely to scrimp on safety features.

And, should there be a recall of the battery in your laptop, make it easy for the manufacturer to contact you--register your computer purchase.If you are curious about the battery in a laptop computer running Windows XP, go to the control panel, open Power Options, click on the Power Meter tab and, finally, click on the battery icon. In the screen shot above, you can see the battery was made by Sanyo. ThinkPad owners should have a ThinkPad configuration program installed (available from Start -> Programs -> ThinkVantage, at least in Windows XP, I'm not sure about Vista) that shows additional information about the battery. As you can see above, this includes the manufacture date and the first-used date. The Status Detail tab (see above) also shows, among other data, the current temperature of the battery, which might bear watching every now and then.

If you know of other software that shows important information about the battery in a laptop computer, please leave a comment below.The laptops in Dell's business range may not be beautiful, but they are generally well put together and available in a wide range of configurations. The Dell Latitude E5410, which costs around £689, fits in nicely to the current Latitude line-up.In terms of design, the E5410 is not exactly what you'd call a looker. It has a very boxy, industrial-looking chassis with harsh angles. To give it its dues, though, it does feel like it could go ten rounds with David Haye and come off none the worse. It's not as boring-looking as Dell's E4310, either, with a two-tone colour scheme of gunmetal grey on the lid and wrist rest, and matte black on the rest of the chassis.Although the laptop isn't overly large for a 14-inch model at 338 by 22 by 244mm, it is quite heavy, weighing in at a hefty 2.36kg. As a result, it's not a great option if you need a machine to use on the move.

As with most business laptops, this model uses a display with a matte rather than glossy finish. This helps to cut down hugely on reflections and makes the screen more comfortable to use indoors under bright lights for longer periods. The 14.1-inch display has an older-style 4:3 aspect ratio and a pretty pedestrian resolution of 1,280x800 pixels. Nevertheless, the screen is quite bright and its viewing angles are good. Colours don't look quite as vibrant as they do on many consumer laptops, but this won't be an issue for most business users.The keyboard features traditional tapered keys and, although the layout is decent, Dell hasn't managed to squeeze in a numerical keypad. While the keys do have a suitable amount of travel and feel responsive under your fingertips, there is a little more flex towards the middle than we would have liked. The E5410's trackpad buttons feel very spongy and are uncomfortable to use. As with most of Dell's business laptops, this one has both a pointer and a trackpad. The trackpad is not overly roomy, but it is fast and accurate. That said, the two bottom-mounted trackpad buttons are very spongy and have too much travel, so you find your thumb pressing against the edge of the chassis when you're tapping on them -- which makes them slightly uncomfortable to use. As you would expect, there's a second set of buttons at the top of the trackpad that are designed to be used with the speedy and responsive pointer. These buttons are actually much better to use, as they are more rigid and responsive.

Samsung's P-series laptops are aimed primarily at business users, so they don't have the same flash styling as some of the company's consumer efforts. That said, the 15.6-inch Samsung P530 is no ugly duckling and, priced at around £500, it's very affordable.Rather than the glossy look that Samsung uses on its consumers laptops, such as the Q330, this model has a more scratch-resistant matte finish. Samsung has tried to jazz up the design with a textured pattern on the lid and keyboard surround. The chassis does feel a little plasticky to the touch, but it's far from flimsy and does give you the confidence that it will stand up to a fair bit of abuse.The keyboard is sort of a cross between an isolated design and a traditional one. It has the wide, flat keys you find on isolated keyboards, but these are packed together in the same way they are on a traditional model. The keyboard doesn't suffer from the flex you find on some cheaper models and the keys have a fair amount of travel, which makes them feel very responsive under your fingers. Samsung has also managed to find space to fit in both dropped cursor keys and a numerical keypad on the right-hand side.

The P530's keyboard combines the best of both worlds, with features of both a traditional and isolated design.Like many laptops aimed at business users, the P530's display features a matte rather than gloss coating. This helps to eliminate screen reflections, which in turn makes the screen easier to work with for prolonged periods of time -- ideal when you need to pull a late shift updating Excel spreadsheets or fine-tuning transitions on your PowerPoint presentation.As with most of today's screens, this one is LED-backlit, so it's very bright and colours look impressively punchy. Its resolution of 1,366x768 pixels is a little pedestrian for a 15-inch model, but the display's viewing angles aren't bad, so you don't have to worry about where you position the screen hinge.

The P530 has 801.11n Wi-Fi on board, but unfortunately, it doesn't have Bluetooth, which is a little puzzling for a business machine. It doesn't excel when it comes to the range of ports on offer, either. It does have both VGA and HDMI sockets for hooking it up to external displays and there are three USB ports, but it lacks an ExpressCard slot and an eSata port, so expansion possibilities are a little limited.The first MacBook Air will go down in history as one of the most divisive pieces of tech ever created. Either a triumph of design and simplicity or an overpriced, feature-bereft lump depending on your point of view, it split the tech world straight down the middle. Well, Apple's back with another iteration of the envelope-thin laptop -- available for around £1,100 -- but can this one finally convince us of the Air's worth?Let's start with the design, which hasn't changed all that much since the last time. We might as well get this out of the way early -- the MacBook Air is astonishingly thin. Even though we've held previous versions, we still passed the Air around, each member of the team turning it over in their hands as if trying to find where the rest of it was kept. It's hard to stress quite how slim the Air is with specs alone, but know that this 13-inch model is 325mm wide, 227mm high and 3mm thick at its thinnest point, 17mm at the thickest.

As you might have guessed, that makes the Air slightly wedge-shaped. It's an astonishingly slim wedge, but there's a definite taper down to the 3mm front lip. This laptop is thin enough to shave with, snowboard on and, if you possess the requisite arm strength, skim across a lake. In keeping with the Air style, this wedge-shaped model is unbelievably thin, but it actually has a surprising amount of heft to it. It's thin to the extreme, but the MacBook Air is actually surprisingly weighty. It's a million miles from heavy, weighing in at just 1.32kg, but we were struck by the substantial feel of this laptop. We're not complaining, though. For want of a better word, the Air feels expensive, and that balanced weight reflects the high build quality that's evident in its construction.The Air sports an aluminium unibody and, for the most part, we've no complaints about the design of this machine. It feels very well put together and, despite the thin chassis, doesn't feel like it would snap in a stiff breeze.

There's no backlit keyboard on offer, which is something we really like on the larger MacBook Pro. Secondly, the bezel is aluminium, and we'd hazard that the black glass surrounding the MacBook Pro's gorgeous display looks a little classier.Those are minor design quibbles, though -- overall, this is an exceptionally good-looking piece of kit.The MacBook Air does two things really, really well: style and usability. Indeed, using this laptop is a genuine pleasure at every stage. The keyboard is incredibly comfortable, with a generous space between each individual key to cut down on accidental mistypings. The traditional Mac 'up' and 'down' arrows persist, and they still seem a little odd to us. If you're used to using a standard PC keyboard, the lack of a delete key might prove a stumbling block.

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