I’ve been having a problem with my battery for my Thinkpad T61 for a while, and since it’s out of warranty I thought I will need to shell out a $150 for a new one.

Luckily, I decided to check the lenovo forums in case there’s others with a major battery problem (completely dead a month after warranty expired), and turns out it’s an “unofficial” recall for a LARGE number of batteries:

Lenovo has released a software tool to evaluate whether your battery is eligible for a free replacement. Note that this tool is not the same one as the Battery Recall Program (which is safety-related).

There is a catch, though. Most of the time, even if you are experiencing a noticeable problem with your battery, the tool will fail to detect it because it has to talk with the ThinkPad Power Manager. On mine, the Manager said my condition is “Fair” and thus unable to qualify. What I did to get it working is a battery gauge reset, which remeasures the voltages of the battery and hopefully would detect the problem. If it doesn’t, give it a few more tries – but beware – every time you do that it takes a toll on your battery life (deep discharge). Only do that if your battery is crap anyways.

Once you get the “Poor” status, run the tool again and you will be directed to a free replacement order form.

Good luck.