The laptop itself is still fairly powerful for an older laptop with an Intel® Core2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz dual core processor and upgraded ram to 4GB it really is a good mobile workhorse. I only paid £50 for the laptop in September & I installed 4GB of ram I had in my desk drawer from an old Macbook upgrade. I also updated the Intel wifi board to an Atheros to allow me to run Trisquel.

The laptop was in great condition when I bought it used, considering it was 6 years old. I did a full refurb myself & stripped it down to clean and restore it. One annoying thing was that the installed battery seemed to be the original & after a lot of charging cycles it was lucky to run for 40 minutes on battery. I decided to hold off upgrading the battery and carried the power cord with me when feasible.Lenovo thinkpad X200 batteries

Last month however the original Lenovo battery finally died. The battery light on the x200 was flashing orange and as soon as I unplugged the power adapter the laptop would power down instantly. I hit the forums & read that this is common with older batteries in the thinkpad’s. Apparently they have a fuse in them & when a cell starts to die, varying the voltage across them, the fuse burns out and shorts the battery. This seemed to be the case so I hit the Internet to weigh up my options.

An original 5200mah battery manufactured by lenovo was coming in at around £70. This didn’t seem like a great option considering I only paid £50 for the laptop. I was adamant that I didn’t want to buy a used battery as the history of the battery & the life remaining is such an unknown, but I definitely wasn’t going to spend so much on an original Lenovo battery.

I found various sellers on eBay & amazon & decided to opt for a higher capacity 7800mah battery. These have a larger form factor & stick out of the back of the laptop, but apparently they can run the X200 for an extended period of time, so I thought it would be a good option. The battery was also cheap at £23 including delivery.

On receipt of the battery it was quite obvious that it was a cheap & nasty product. It had a small crack in the flimsy plastic case, the locking button was stiff and the copper pins of the battery looked like a dog had been chewing them.

I tested the battery to see if this was just cosmetic, but when plugging the battery in i found that they battery would run the laptop, but would not charge & wasn’t even being detected by the X200 charging circuits. For all intents & purposes, the laptop didn’t know a battery was present & also couldn’t give any indication of charge levels or discharge rates.

I contacted the seller who must have known this is a common problem as he refunded the order, without question or return. I was disappointed but relieved to have the refund.

I then decided to head to Amazon. I was determined to find a cheaper third-party battery & decided to look for an item which was held in Amazon stock & dispatched by them. This way, if any problems arose I would be dealing with amazon for a return and not a third-party seller.

I found the battery supplied by a company called TPE. Another third-party brand I had never heard of, but a brand none the less. They had a website & lots of safety certification. They also seemed to have positive reviews so I decided to order from them. This battery was a 5200mah battery which was the same spec as the original Lenovo. I decided to go for this one as I prefer the flush fitting of the standard battery over the extended life battery I tried previously.

The TPE X200 battery came within a week and again cost me £23. This one was 100% better. Nicely packaged, perfect anti-static, decent quality casing & stickers & the copper pins where perfect. I plugged it into the X200 and instantly I was running off battery. It was 78% charged and the X200 on trisquel was showing 3 hours of battery life remaining.

Modern lithium-ion batteries are less prone to memory effect than older laptop batteries but I always run new batteries in nicely. It’s a habit now. So I ran on battery until it was critically low & then gave it a full charge. I’ve got to say, I have no complaints with the battery. After a few full cycles it’s holding excellent charge & giving me almost 4 hours without using any specific power tweaks on Trisquel.

This TPE battery seems comparable in quality to the original Lenovo battery & I would highly recommend you have a search on Amazon if you need to update or replace yours.

The X200 takes battery part number FRU P/N 42T4647 or ASM P/N 42T4537 as standard so search for those part numbers if you want to replace your original X200 5200mah battery.

On our return the Macbook refused to startup. On pressing the power button it would make the startup chime, the grey apple screen would appear with the apple logo and then with a click of the hard drive the machine would shut down. This happened every time we tried to boot the laptop. The liquid had done damage. I inspected the Macbook where the drops had landed, mainly around the top right of the keyboard & the power button. I couldn’t see any signs of moisture at all. I suspected a fried logic board but refused to give up on the machine & testing.

I decided to lay it keyboard down on a towel and let it dry out for 12 hours. This did nothing. I then tried sitting the laptop in the sunlight to dry even further. Again nothing. I even pondered a huge bag or rice, but it seemed overkill for a few drops of tea. I thought long & hard how a few drops of liquid could have made it past the keyboard & backlight & down to the logic board. It was almost impossible due to the low amount of drips on the keyboard. At this point I decided that it must be a faulty keyboard or power button. As the laptop would boot a little surely the logic board must be OK.

I then tried booting the laptop holding the command key. It booted without issue, but as soon as I released the key it would shutdown. The shutdown was exactly the same as when you force shutdown the Macbook by holding the power button for 4 seconds. Eureka! It must be a short in the power button circuit. Probably due to the sugar content in the tea or corrosion caused by the moisture.

Next I opened up the Macbook, pulling out the radio board, battery, Superdrive and other bits getting in the way. I revealed the power button and noticed that the power button is part of the keyboard assembly and runs on a ribbon to the rest of the keyboard circuitry. As the keyboard was fried I decided to take a knife and slice off the ribbon for the power button. Surely if the short was in the button itself this would isolate it & allow the machine to boot. It didn’t. No big deal, the keyboard was thought to be faulty anyway so next I decided to disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable from the logic board, isolating the keyboard. As soon as I did this & reassembled the Macbook booted & worked perfectly. Due to the fact that I had disconnected the power button I had to start the Macbook up by shorting the power pads on the logic board. I did this with a screwdriver. I then replaced the bottom cover and had a fully working Macbook, without a keyboard & power button.

The power button wasn’t an issue as the Macbook always uses sleep as opposed to a cold shutdown. I plugged in an external keyboard and the Macbook was once again functional. What a result. We had gone from a destroyed Macbook to one with an obviously faulty internal keyboard. I enquired locally with Mac repair specialists who quoted between £200-£300 to replace the keyboard. Ridiculous prices, so I headed over to eBay and ordered a brand new official apple Macbook pro keyboard & brand new backlight for £24 delivered. The keyboard arrived next day and I set to work dismantling the Macbook. It’s a complicated laptop to dismantle, but only because of the sheer number of steps & screws involved. The keyboard assembly alone is held in by about 80 tiny little screws.

To disassemble you need to remove the bottom cover, followed by the battery. I then removed the hard drive mount, the superdrive & radio board, followed by the logic board fan, ribbon cables & logic board. There are model specific tear-downs over on ifixit so check those out for your model.

Removing the old keyboard & fitting the new one is time-consuming & fiddly, but not overly difficult. The hardest & most scary part for me was refitting the ribbon cable for the keyboard. It’s hard to get it seated properly, so I used a bit of sticky tape on the ribbon to create a tab, allowing me to pull the cable home in the bracket without kinking or bending it. Reassembly is the opposite of disassembly. When disassembling I’d advise that you keep components & their screws together so you know which screw belongs to which part. For the logic board screws I laid them out on a piece of card board in the same pattern as they came out of the logic board (see above picture), that way I could quickly see which hole to put them back into.

Once reassembled the MacBook worked perfectly. It had a brand new keyboard & backlight, which was all new & matte finished (the old one had gone shiny). This fix is well worth it if you think you have water damaged your MacBook, at least try disconnecting the keyboard to rule it out. If it boots, you can work with an external keyboard until you get around to replacing it. The Apple Macbook in question is 4 years old but perfectly good & used heavily, so this fix was a lifesaver. What’s more I managed to save a perfectly good bit of tech & a load of money in the process.

Well I’m now in the second month of ownership and I still love the Samsung N110. This machine has completely changed the way I browse then Internet, and the fact that most of the things I do online are web based such as Twitter, Gmail, iPlayer and reading news and blogs, the Netbook is an ideal partner.

I was sceptical from the start with regards to quoted battery life, but I’ve got to admit, even with normal usage on battery with brightness adjusted to my lining and iTunes either playing music or downloading podcasts in the background, I still manage in excess of 8 hours battery life from a single charge. I now find that If I charge the netbook overnight, I can do all my computing on it the following day without the need for a power outlet. The powe consumption and battery life is amazing, and although the system may be limited from a processor power point of view, it is more than sufficient for editing photos in Picassa or Photoshop, and writing php in Dreamweaver.

Another fear when buying the netbook was the size. I wanted a laptop which was portable, and all the laptops I have owned in the past where far from portable because they required hoofing about in laptop bags, and always required the AC adaptors. The Samsung N110 was supplied with it’s own samsung netbook sleeve, and I tend to just throw it in the car or a backpack to take it anywhere I go.

The screen is only 10 inches, and the resolution is only 1024 x 600 but this is quite easy to get used to, and the synaptic scroll pad is great for scrolling down web pages. Most pages will fit horizontally without need for scrolling and with the adoption of good CSS standards, most content will shift to fit.

The keyboard was another worry, coming it at something like 93% of full size I’ve actually adjusted to the keyboard really well, and it is really nice to type on for extended periods of time.  The silver nano key coating is also welcome as it eliminates bacteria growth on the keys, and i far more hygenic than normal keyboards.

I have tried Windows 7 on the Samsung N110 and whilst it runs well, there are issues with shutdown taking a while. Also I’ve experienced far reduced battery life under Windows 7, and the netbook feels nowhere near as snappy as it does under XP, so I’ve opted to stay with XP on the netbook. To be honest I don’t really see a problem with using XP on a netbook as it is a very familiar operating system, and does a great job at providing awesome performance and superb battery life.

This netbook has really set me free with regards working from home. Coupled with the new iPhone 3.01 update and Tethering I can work online from anywhere (even got online from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and was able to work and twitter). The combination of the netbook and the iPhone means I am now truly mobile.

I can’t see my life without a netbook in it now, and hopefully as processor development continues, and battery technology improves we can maybe hit the 24 or 48 hour battery life marks. By using the Netbook in place of the Desktop 99% of the time I’ve reduced my power consumption from 400-500 watts right down to 6-8 watts of power draw. This is a great benefit of Netbook technology, and may even persuade me to look into a net-top for home.

I’ll keep posting reviews of this netbook along with experiences and problems encountered so watch this space.

Downloading Carpool Podcast. Check it out at Llewtube or on iTunes