Replacement RM Laptop Batteries

[trunks]

Hi there

 

First time posting so bare with me.

 

Basically I’m looking for information on where I can buy replacement batteries for RM Laptops.

 

I work at a Secondary School with an RM CC3 network. The teaching staff all have laptops, mainly Nbook 4300 & 4400 models. None of my teachers know how to look after the batteries and a large amount of them have started to fail or only last a matter of minutes. I’ve bought replacements from RM direct in the past but I’ve had 9 sent to me in the last couple of weeks and not one of them works.

 

Each of the new battery’s sent are made by 2 Power so I’ve suggested to RM that it must be a supplier problem as I haven’t had any problems before with other models. But RM support sucks and they aren’t getting back to me.

 

Getting kinda desperate now so like I said before I’m looking for any information of where I can get some batteries from would be great.

 

Thanks

[stebo730]

Check the code on the actual battery - something like BATCL50L in our case with some RM NBook 4110s.

 

We managed to get 20 of these online from China - www good-batteries.co.uk

 

They only accepted PayPal but delivery was within 2 weeks.

 

I think they were about £35 each - not bad considering some places were charging up to £85.

[trunks]

Thanks. The model battery I'm looking for is BATEL80L6. I've looked on the website you've suggested but they don't have that model.

[bossman]

@trunks:

 

I would be very careful when purchasing batteries other than from the intended source (RM or the actual manufacturer) especially when its children who are using them as there has been quite a few accounts of these batteries exploding into flames.

 

Only the other day I had been told (and shown photos) by one of our staff members that a family member had bought a laptop battery from ebay where the source had been China and he was lucky that the house had not burnt down or he himself had not been seriously injured.

 

This is not meant to scare people but to make them aware of the dangers of not purchasing genuine parts when it comes to batteries as I would hate for a child or member of staff to be seriously injured from something that I had purchased on the cheap.

 

Better to be safe than sorry

 

This is just my advice but backed up by countless incidents involving batteries for all types of equipment.

[trunks]

Thanks Bossman. I completely agree with your point. When it comes to hardware and replacement parts, I always buy from the manufacturer.

 

The issue I have though is that I've tried that and already bought 9 batteries direct from RM and none of them work. I've contacted Rm and over 3 weeks has pasted now and I still don't have any answers. At one point their Hardware Support team refused to speak to me because the laptop I had in front of me was out of warranty, even though I had explained that I had tested the new battery's on 4 different laptops.

 

Getting quite desperate now which is why I posted hoping someone else has had a similar problem and had some advice.

[laptopsandspares]

Hi Trunks,

 

I have to echo sentiments on here about being careful with third party products. It's not so much the fact that the products are not branded by the manufacturers (Few major laptop players manufacture battery cells other than Samsung, LG and Panasonic) it's to do with what they are built with. It's a tough industry sector as is buying anything that's manufactured whole or in part in China as they love to take a good design and cut corners to make it cheaper Even manufacturer "original" products can go wrong. remember the Dell recall a few years ago? The batteries had Sony cells in. Be careful with overseas too as you can get collered for the import duty (3%) and UK VAT which suddenly hikes the price. You are also responsible for how they are declared which is a bit unfair being as you only ordered them but for example if the shipper labels them as Zero value or "gift" to dodge the duty, it's you that's liable if HMC&E spot it.

 

That said, you need to find a solution and quickly so I appreciate all options need to be considered. I know where the 2 Power units come from and to be fair, they probably aren't faulty (not in those numbers), although I could be wrong. I'd think it's more likely there are compatibilty issues at work. I've seen this before with the BATCL50L mentioned above, 2 products, 2 different suppliers, one would work in every laptop we shipped it for and one from the other factory would only work in about 50%. We never got to the bottom of it.

 

I have to be a bit careful what I offer to do as I'm not signed up as a sponsor yet but as I don't happen to carry a model against your part number and thus can't "sell" you anything, i think I'm ok to offer to help if i can. Can you post a picture, or pm/e.mail of one of the original working units from when the laptops were purchased, along with units supplied previously that did work, and one of the units that doesn't? If they are nice and clear ('m looking for all model references, bar codes/date codes in focus) I'll ask around and see if there is anyone in the UK with anything other than a 2Power product you might be able to try. If this fails I can approach some of our manufacturers to see if any are developing anything for these units. Currently my preffered guys don't.

 

Regards

 

David

[Arthur]

When looking for batteries for RM laptops, I've found it's a lot easier if you find out who the original OEM is. The nBook 4150 for example, is a Compal HEL8X.

 

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