My laptop is one of my most important tools. While my servers and office systems have all of my configured software and documents, I can't take them with me on customer trips, or even to the living room for some late-night catching up while watching TV. The laptop is basically my portable window into my office.
I don't need a powerful laptop. I'm not a gamer and I rarely develop software directly on it. The biggest applications I use are Impress for presentations and VLC for watching movies on airplanes. Most of the time, I'm simply accessing websites, running diagnostics, or remotely logging into my office. (If someone were to steal my laptop, they won't get much. They can't access the office without my passwords and biometrics. If it ever were stolen, I can immediately lock down all network access to my office with a single unpublished URL.)
More Laptop
Last year, I wrote about
my laptop. Back then, the Windows 10 operating system was hitting end-of-life and needed to be replaced. The final straw was the "Patch Tuesday" where the laptop sat at "Restarting" forever. Since the laptop is only used for remote access, there was nothing that needed keeping. I ended up reinstalling it with Ubuntu Linux.
This OS switch came with a few pleasant surprises:
- The laptop was significantly faster. (Windows is a resource hog!)
- The hard drive had a lot more room. (Linux is smaller than Windows.)
- Restoring the network from suspend worked perfectly. This had been a problem under Windows.
- The original battery lasted 8-9 hours under Windows, but had aged to lasting 4-6 hours from a full charge. With Linux, I was getting 10-12 hours of use from the same hardware.
- I had some touchpad issues under Windows. Switching to Linux made those issues mostly go away.
Touchpad
While the touchpad issues were mostly resolved, they weren't completely gone. The mouse cursor would move correctly, but sometimes the mouse buttons would become non-responsive or require multiple presses before they worked. A reboot would fix the problem temporarily, so I didn't think it was the hardware wearing out.
Under Windows, I found a few other people with the same problem, but "reboot Windows" was the cure for everything. With Linux, there are enough tools for a real diagnosis and easy fix.
The laptop communicates with the touchpad using a two-wire protocol called I2C. When the laptop suspends and restores, the I2C drivers can get into an inconsistent state, causing the buttons to fail. The solution? I created a system restore script that restarts the I2C drivers when it wakes up. With Ubuntu, create the executable file "
/lib/systemd/system-sleep/restart-touchpad":
#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
post)
# Unload the ACPI and I2C drivers
rmmod i2c_hid_acpi
rmmod i2c_hid
# Reload them for a clean reset
modprobe i2c_hid
modprobe i2c_hid_acpi
;;
esac
That's it. You don't need to restart anything. Now the touchpad works properly all of the time.
Old Hardware
I usually keep hardware until it stops working. For example, I had an old Pentium computer with a 120MB hard drive that I used as my mail server for over 20 years. OS patches? Ha! It was still running Redhat 5.1! (Old hacker security tip: nobody looks for 20-year-old vulnerabilities, and newer vulnerabilities didn't work on old systems.) In my opinion, as long as the system is stable, why risk replacing it? The only reason I retired that old mail server was that everyone was moving to TLS for secure email transfers and some of the OpenSSL dependencies were too complicated to port to the old system. The 30+ year old hardware itself still worked fine.
The same goes with laptops. For someone who has been in the computer field for over 40 years, I've only ever owned four laptops. My first one was an Apple. (Never again.) It lost OS support after 2 years. However, I didn't move off of the laptop until the browser providers (Chrome and Firefox) stopped supporting it. I needed a modern browser, so that meant a modern laptop.
My Asus EeePC was my favorite because it was tiny and lightweight. However, after a decade most OS's dropped support for the Atom processor, so I had to update again.
These days, I'm using a Dell XPS that I purchased in 2017. The hardware is designed to last, the only issue was the touchpad -- and that's fixed now. That just left the battery.
Battery
No laptop batteries last forever. With lithium-ion, they start with a long lifespan and then slowly degrade over time. However "slowly" isn't linear. After a few years, you'll start seeing the battery runtime decline, and as time passes it will decline very rapidly. When it's completely dead, it might hold a charge for five minutes.
Lithium-ion batteries typically last seven to ten years, although heavy cycling, deep discharges, and heat can shorten that lifespan. My laptop was from 2017, putting it well into the "old battery" range. When it was new, it could hold a charge for 8-10 hours while running Windows. After eight years, Windows was lasting 4-6 hours before I switched to Linux. Linux lightened the power requirements, bringing it back to a 10 hour battery. That doesn't mean that the battery is fresh; it just means that the new OS was more power efficient.
Over the last year, it had entered the fast decline that is typical for lithium batteries. Last month, a full charge was lasting 2.5 - 3.5 hours (still under Linux). If I can't last an entire airplane flight, then that's effectively a dead battery. While I'm thrilled to have had nearly 9.5 years out of this battery, I had to make a choice:
- (A) Get a new laptop. These days, that would cost me $900 - $1500.
- (B) Get a new battery. I saw prices that varied from $25 to $100.
My thought: if I could get a new battery and maybe another 7 years of life out of this laptop, then it was definitely worth it. (Also, I wouldn't have to lose all of the stickers I had plastered on the laptop.) In the worst case, either a new battery wouldn't help or I'd damage the laptop while swapping batteries. But for under $100? I was willing to experiment.
The huge price range really bothered me. As far as I can tell, all of the sub-$75 batteries were from pop-up providers. Vendors who were here today and gone tomorrow. Each had reviews that ranged from "5 stars: It works!" to "1 star" with long paragraphs about all of the problems and non-responsive vendors. Even though the batteries were all marketed as "new", they were probably "newly rebuilt" and not really "new".
Dell no longer makes this battery, but a few companies still have good reputations for selling genuinely new batteries rather than rebuilt packs. I had never purchased from
iFixIt before. And now that I have, I highly recommend them. (I am not a paid spokesperson, I'm just a very happy customer. As an aside, I often blog about problems with vendors. This time, I only have positive things to say.)
The battery was affordable (under $100 and with free shipping). It arrived on time. It arrived well-packaged and undamaged. (This is always a concern with lithium batteries.) It said that the package included a small toolbox, but that wasn't part of my decision process. Now that I've used it, this is one of the nicest toolboxes I've ever had for repairing equipment. It includes:
- A metal shim, for prying open lids without cracking the tabs.
- A bunch of plastic shims, so the lid doesn't close while sliding the metal shim around the seams.
- Every screw driver bit size you might need.
- High quality tweezers.
- A plastic tool that is great for helping peel up tape.
- A suction cup, in case you're repairing a cellphone screen.
- Even the toolbox lid is well-designed, with grids for holding screws. I populated it with the screws I pulled out (each type and location went in a different holder) and put the screwdriver bit next to it as I went.
I found out the hard way that it is designed for use with one hand! With my laptop, I had removed the screws and was using the metal shim to pry off the back. I realized that I needed a plastic shim to prevent the lid from snapping back on while I worked. With one hand, I held the metal shim in the lid. With the other hand, I was able to push down on one side of the plastic shim and have it pop up so I could grab it. I didn't realize that there were multiple plastic shims until they popped up and exploded all over the desk. This was a very pleasant surprise.
Here's the
toolbox:
(Be careful pushing on the blue plastic triangular shims in the middle. There are a bunch of them and they will all suddenly pop out!)
And here's the laptop mid-replacement:
(The old battery is off the top of the photo. The new battery is the black rectangle in the top center. It goes over the touchpad, which is the green board at the bottom of the screen.)
A few years ago, I tried to replace the battery in my Samsung tablet. I had a hodgepodge collection of tools and ended up destroying the tablet. I was worried about doing the same thing to the laptop. But with the right tools, going slowly, and taking photos, I managed to replace the battery without any problems in under 30 minutes. (Now that I know what I'm doing, I could probably do it in 10 minutes without feeling rushed.) It was truly painless.
Calibration
After swapping the battery, the laptop wouldn't turn on. That's fine -- the new battery shipped without a charge. After 10 minutes of charging, I could turn the laptop on. (Good! I didn't break anything.)
The next step is to calibrate the battery. This isn't for the battery's health; it calibrates the software that reports how much power remains.
- Typical batteries: With regular lead-acid and alkaline batteries, the output voltage is pretty linear. You can measure the voltage to determine the battery's remaining capacity.
- Lithium-ion batteries: Lithium-ion batteries have a long, flat discharge rate. You can't just look at the voltage and determine how much battery time is left. During the flat discharge rate, the micro-voltage differences can be too small for the hardware to detect; there may be no measurable difference between 30% and 70% capacity. To estimate the remaining time, the OS uses a combination of measured voltage and a timer for how long it took to drain. For the calibration, you put it through a full charging cycle, full discharge, and full charge again. This helps the software guestimate the capacity during the flat discharge rate.
My laptop's battery is rated at 7.6V and 60Wh. With Windows, I was getting nearly 10 hours with the original battery. But now I'm on Linux, which consumes much less power. I had no idea how long this new battery would last.
To calibrate with Linux, you should remove the power history. This forces it to learn based on the new battery.
sudo systemctl stop upower
sudo rm /var/lib/upower/history-*
sudo systemctl start upower
Next, fully charge the battery. Let it charge for at least two hours beyond "fully charged".
The full discharge step is kind of a challenge, since the OS wants to be as efficient as possible. Turn off power-saving mode, turn off the screen saver, turn off suspend, etc. I gave it something to do: play the movie "The Bourne Identity" over and over until the battery was fully drained. (The computer will warn about low voltage, and then shutdown automatically. That's the full discharge.) With this new battery? I expected it to last for 12 or 14 hours. Instead, it ran for 30 hours! (I suspect that it was using a hardware-based video decoder which is very power-efficient, and letting the CPU itself effectively rest and consume flea power.)
The final full charge cycle probably only needed a few hours, but I let it go overnight.
With the new battery installed and calibrated, Linux reports "15 hours remaining". After five hours of use, I still have "14 hours remaining", and if I start compiling code, it drops to "10 hours remaining." I'm not too worried about the calibration's accuracy since it may take the OS time to learn. I might not be able to tell the time remaining with extreme accuracy, but I'm sure it will last an entire plane flight on travel days.
Right to Repair
There's an entire movement centered around the right to repair equipment. Being able to change a battery in a working device is one of those
basic tenets. My Samsung tablet appeared designed to self-destruct when opened. My Dell laptop was built to be repaired, and the tools from iFixIt simplified this process. I'm sure my laptop is good for at least another seven years.
In my home town of Fort Collins, they are building a new library. This one will include an "innovation maker-space". They recently had an open house to discuss wants and needs with the community. People wanted everything from a 3D printer and laser cutter to sewing machines, button makers, and classes on gardening. One of the things that was repeatedly mentioned by attendees was a repair station. Whether it's a team of volunteers, one-time hands-on classes, or something in between, people have a strong desire to repair electronics before buying a replacement.
My successful weekend project is exactly why community maker-spaces are so vital. When manufacturers design hardware to be opened, and companies like iFixIt provide the exact toolkits to do it safely, fixing our own tech transitions from a stressful gamble to a rewarding afternoon project. We don't need to throw away perfectly good silicon just because a battery gets old. Keeping this laptop out of a landfill isn't just a win for my wallet, it's a small victory for a more sustainable, fix-it-first mindset.
The combination of a lightweight Linux OS, a fresh battery, and the right tools completely resurrected a piece of hardware that most people would have recycled years ago. It may not be the latest or greatest, but it's perfect for the next time I leave the office.
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