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| New Simplo C4500BAT-6 for System76 Pangolin Performance P8 Laptop |
When I had initially ordered my System76 Pangolin P8 laptop back in 2011, I had decided to order an extra battery as a spare.
With System76 as a boutique small-scale manufacturer located in the US and I as a customer in Canada, I was dubious at the time about the capacity for service and spare parts if anything should go wrong. Part of the reasoning was my concern at the time that local laptop repair shops would mostly have serviced common Windows and Mac computers, and little experience repairing a custom Linux machine from a little known manufacturer.
From my research and understanding, System76 uses various laptop chassis built by Clevo (a Taiwanese manufacturer) as the base on which they build their custom laptop models. The batteries for these chassis seem to be generic laptop batteries assembled in China by Simplo Technologies, another Taiwanese manufacturer. My Pangolin uses a Simplo C4500BAT-6 model.
Multidisciplinary, award-winning and intrepid Systems Engineer with business & sales acumen. Skilled systems thinker and problem solver. Achieves win-win solutions and value for all stakeholders.
Interested in applying my skill set to deliver value at the intersection of technology and business.
Over the years, both my original and spare batteries have degraded to the point of becoming effectively useless for delivering any reasonable amount of battery life. One barely holds charge for a few minutes; the other manages to cough up about 45 minutes worth of power under normal usage before it sputters and dies. So just after the 5-year mark last year, I decided it was time to order a replacement. As I mentioned in my last post, my Pangolin was in exceptional shape, and performing very well. I saw no reason to discard an exceptionally well performing machine, and saw value in upgrading whatever could be interchanged to extend its life to the maximum possible.
However, when I scouted around locally, I ran into the same problems that had given me cause for concern over 5 years ago. When I checked with local battery suppliers in Vancouver, no one had any of this model in stock. Battery World and Vancouver Battery were two of the most well-known suppliers in the lower mainland. One had never heard of the manufacturer, and the other had a few Simplo models, but not the C4500BAT-6.
As a last resort, I turned to that ambitious and ubiquitous supplier of all things, Amazon. And lo behold, a plethora of suppliers from $18.00 USD upward. However, I decided to check with System76 customer support before buying. Their advice - although a spare could be bought off Amazon, the quality of the suppliers could vary and be quite spotty. Given that they could guarantee the quality of their supplier and not wanting to play Russian roulette with my order, I decided to place an order for a new battery and gave customer support the green light.
One of the aspects I really like about System76 as a supplier is their customer interaction interface on the website, especially customer support. It feels less like ordering from a clinical, distant, impersonal corporate entity and more like interacting with a friendly neighbourhood shop. The interface is built really well, visually engaging and fun to use, while being incredibly uncomplicated. The order came to $169.39 USD with UPS Worldwide Expedited shipping costs included. My end expenditure came to $229.99 CAD with the conversion rate factored in. The battery arrived last September and was kept aside until I could get this blog restarted and my Linux adventures chronicled.
I finally replaced the battery today and took some comparison shots of the charge/discharge statistics of the old and new batteries using Ubuntu's battery and power statistics applications:
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| Degraded C4500BAT-6 battery (ordered Jul '11) - Discharge/Charge profile after 5.5 years. |
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| Degraded C4500BAT-6 battery (ordered Jul '11) - Rapid discharge profile after 5.5 years. Maximum battery life of 45 minutes. |
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| New C4500BAT-6 battery (ordered Sep '16) - First time charge profile. |
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| New C4500BAT-6 battery (ordered Sep '16) - First time discharge profile, 2 hrs battery life. |
The new C4500BAT-6 was charged to 100% and the Pangolin unplugged from the A/C adapter at exactly 18:00 hours. Under my usual normal usage, it ran out of capacity at 20:07, 2 hours and 07 minutes later.
So far, so good. Hopefully, there won't be any nasty surprises over the next long while.
The next item on the agenda for my Pangolin will be a long-awaited hard drive upgrade that should approximately quadruple its storage capacity in anticipation of extending its useful life to the maximum. However, I will probably delay that until the eagerly anticipated release of Ubuntu 17.04 LTS in April. Until then, I have my other System76 addition to introduce - the desktop-replacement steal that I found on Craigslist, and my upgrade plans for that. See you in the next post!
Regards,
The Sage (湯馬士 凱文)
Interested in applying my skill set to deliver value at the intersection of technology and business.
REFERENCES:
[1] Clevo
[3] Battery World
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