Vaio batteries

[Cephus0]

Just had a two year old Vaio battery for a VPCSP laptop totally fail.  The Sony dealer tells me this is because these batteries have smart circuitry which talks to the computer but sometimes fails.  Personally I would prefer a battery which is not 'smart' and works rather than leave me dead in the water and cost £100 to replace.  In addition it is minimum six week delivery time!!!  I simply find it hard to credit that I can spend nearly £2k on a laptop and have it blow up like that and out of action for six weeks.  Has anyone else experienced this completely unacceptable level of service?

[Cephus0]

Sorry all - wrong forum - will repost.

[Anonymous]

Hi there

I have just moved the thread, no need to repost

Cheers

[takrzem]

I share your pain, but however hard I try, I cannot find anything unacceptable in SONY's response.

Your battery is two year old and most likely well past its warranty date. If the battery failed (and it does not matter why after that time), there you have to buy another one. I am sure you will agree that it could also well be that battery is drained completely?

Modern batteries seem to be now smart and putting aside what do you / I  / anyone else think about this approach (and costs associated) you really have three choices:

1. Keep upper lip stiffed and buy original SONY battery, with 6 weeks lead time and £100.

2. Risk issues (my friend had all sorts of these) and buy replacement baterry for fraction of the above. Be aware, that you may damage your laptop because of the lack of aforementioned circuitry...

3. Use your laptop without battery (if possible, not sure about it).

I think this choice 1 is the best one you have. I would try to shop around or try to negotiate further with SONY - maybe battery return / refurbishment would cut costs down?

[Cephus0]

Thanks again takrzem.  The battery had only minor use since I also added an extended second battery soon after purchase.  It was very rare for the 2nd battery to be exhausted so the main battery was hardly ever discharged from the 80% max it was set to charge to.  I stopped using the 2nd battery for a while, disconnected it and it was then that the main battery terminally failed.  Perhaps that's why although it shouldn't do that.

Yes, I agree and do not want to go down the route of non-Sony replacement parts so this does indeed leave me with a six week minimum order delay and I will have to bite that bullet.  I travel a lot for work though and this is my main machine with all the software I use so it leaves me seriously compromised.  Six weeks to obain a mainstream common battery for a flagship machine, when it is well known that these items are failure prone, is simply unworkable as a mobile computing solution.  I like the Sony but cannot work like that and so sadly will not be a future Sony customer.

[takrzem]

Clear and understood.

Honestly, I was always sceptical and never trusted these Batter Care functions - battery should be charged and discharged on a regular basis as common sense simply dictates. There might be some neliglible positive effects, however there also might be all sorts of other unfacourable side effects.

Good luck!