What Was Old is Now New Again

Laptop needs a new battery...already. Shortly after getting this laptop up and running again, I had bought a replacement battery last year because the original one was shot. It was fairly inexpensive at about $35. I knew it wouldn't last long, as these laptop batteries never seem to do, but I was hoping it would have lasted a bit longer. Even when it was new it would only last about 2.5 hours which was never long enough...for me anyway.

Modular bay and standard batteries

I've been looking for a replacement that would last longer but I haven't found one. I knew I might have trouble finding replacement parts for this laptop since it's so old. Luckily I came across not only a replacement battery, but an additional battery that plugs into the modular bay. This is one of the things I love about this old laptop. It's got a modular bay that fits either a 3'5 floppy drive, CD or DVD ROM drive, or an extra battery.

Modular drives and battery

The new batteries cost me just over $100 shipped from battdepot.com and battery life is now around five hours. Much better. I hated having to plug it in every time I wanted to use it, kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place. Maybe this old laptop still has some life left in it.

Why my Laptop is Running Hot

Dust Bunnies. Apparently they were getting in through the vents and multiplying. This is what I had guessed. Not sure why I haven't pulled it apart and cleaned it before. Anyway did it tonight and it's running cooler and no longer overheating. Now I just need a new battery and I'll be all set.

Before

After

Before

After

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: My New Old Laptop

I have been on this kick about not throwing stuff out unless it's absolutely necessary and reusing or fixing whatever I can. I have this old laptop that used to be my wife's. It worked fine in the beginning but then we started having problems with the hard drive and then the battery went and then she spilled a cup of coffee into it. After that the keyboard would no longer work. So we eventually bought her a new one which she needed for school but this one just sat. I hear everyone say "just through it out and get a new one...they're so cheap." It's not that I don't want to spend the money, it's just I have a hard time throwing away an almost perfectly good laptop. This thing is actually in good shape, except for a couple of minor cracks in the case. So I decided I was going to fix it, I could at least use it as a training exercise if I ever needed to work on a laptop again.

I knew it needed at least two things, a new keyboard and a new battery. One of the guys in the IS dept. at work hooked me up with a couple of websites that had parts pretty cheap. I got both the battery and new keyboard for $85 shipped to my door. All of the service documentation I got from Dell's website so replacing the parts were easy. I know I needed a hard drive too but didn't want to spring the $$$ until I knew the laptop was working well so I threw in a 10GB one I had lying around for file transfers. I was also able to get all the required updated drivers I needed and I had the original Windows XP disk the reinstall the OS. So far it's running good, I obviously need to get a bigger hard drive and I'd like to upgrade the memory from the 512MB to 2GB. A Bluetooth card would be nice too and will probably invest in something soon. So for maybe another couple hundred bucks I could have a decent machine. I would like to upgrade the video card from the 32MB to the 64MB version but that would require a motherboard change which is about $250. So unless I find another Dell Inspiron 600m on eBay or Craigslist with a busted LCD I'll just live with it for now. If anyone reading this has parts for this machine that they'd like to unload, please let me know.