Toshiba x305 adapter can not fully charge the laptop battery

Does your Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q701, or some other Toshiba POS randomly shut off and not fully charge the laptop battery? This is apparently a very common problem with these notebooks. When I had to fix my friend’s laptop I searched all over the internet for a solution. I found quite a few forum threads and laptop reviews discussing the issue but no one actually fixed it themselves. Lazy bastards. Most of these folks were having them sent in for warranty work and having the entire main boards replaced. This is a ridiculous waste of money for someone. I did see an ad for some computer repair place who was charging $200 to fix these, which is a total rip off. They were replacing the jack (claiming $20 just for the part!!) which is not necessary (at least not with this one). Well, I am really cheap and I didn’t want to deal with the time or BS of having it shipped (the warranty is expired anyway), so I fixed it. Cliff’s notes at bottom.

The power led on the front would flicker when the Toshiba x305 adapter was plugged in. I could wiggle the power cord and it would change the nature of the flickering. Sometimes it would stay on continuously and sometimes it would shut off depending on the wiggling. This behavior had the obvious side effects of shutting the computer off and never really charging the battery. Oh how irritating.

At first I thought it was the power cord. I mean I could wiggle the cord and it made changes to the flickering, so why not? After testing it with the volt meter it seemed to be good, good enough to not spend ~$85 on a new power cord. What else could it be?

The x305 adapter jack in the machine turned out to be the culprit. Well, sort of. Technically it was the connection between the jack and the main board. Yeah, just a stupid connection. Not the whole motherboard like the corporate “customer service” reps want you to think. See, the jack has the positive connection coming out of the back and directly into the board with a little weak solder joint keeping the jack from rocking back and forth. When the laptop is subjected to normal amounts of power cord wiggling it breaks the weak joint and screws up power delivery. You can test this by plugging in the laptop and pushing the end of the cord (where it goes into the computer) in different directions while watching the green power light. Mine broke mostly on the top joint and so the light would be a solid green if I pushed the cord end UP (thereby pushing the connection back together), and would totally turn off when I pushed the cord end down.

You can view the backside of the jack by popping the little panel thats above the laptop keyboard (it also goes over the screen hinges):

You can plug the computer in and wiggle the cord end to see if there is a visible crack. Mine had a visible crack when i pushed the cord end down. The picture above, however, was taken after I fixed it, so I have no pics of the crack.

Ok, so now you have to fix it. This is extremely easy. If you have ever soldered, you can do it. Take the laptop apart. I used this guide here which is really good. Just get the main board out so you can solder on the bottom of the jack. Once the board is out you just solder the bottom of the + terminal of the jack (the part of the jack that goes into the middle of the cord). Then solder the top. I tried to make the top solder joint as beefy as possible so it takes a while before the problem happens again. i.e. solder the circled terminal on top and the corresponding bottom terminal:

Power stuff on X305-Q701 went to shit. Wasn’t the power cord. Was the + side jack connection to the main board. Take apart laptop, take out main board, re-solder on the bottom AND on the top of + connection. Put it back together. Enjoy the not-sucking laptop.

Tips to Maximise Dell Inspiron B130 Battery Life

Laptop batteries are designed specifically for different laptops brand as well as models. Today laptops are powered by lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries are lighter, have a better power-to-weight ratio,have a longer usable life, can hold a charge longer, and do not have the memory effect to fail prematurely.

Lithium ion batteries(such as Dell Inspiron B130 Battery and dell precision m60 battery ) are also inexpensive to manufacture as compared to the earlier generation of nickel metal hydride batteries. The only shortcoming about lithium ion batteries is as they contain lithium salt dissolved in a highly flammable solvent, there are chances of overhead which can result in short-circuits or even blow up in flames.

It is a common fact that all laptop batteries have provision for limited time of power supply. A good bargain is to check the battery power while buying a notebook. Here is one instant tip to optimize the battery settings in accordance with the energy saving mode of your notebook. These settings will put the hard disk into sleep mode whenever the workload is less and it will reduce the notebook microprocessor performance in order to maximize its battery life.

From the system preferences mode of your laptop, select view menu, then choose energy saver option from view menu. Right click on show details option and choose battery power from the pop-up menu. Finally choose longest battery life from the energy settings pop-up menu.
Tips to optimise your notebook batteries are described in the following:
It is a good investment to add more memory to your laptop as it saves battery power by reducing Windows’ dependence on the virtual memory swap file on your hard disk.

It is better to keep your laptop on standby mode when not in use for certain amount of time. Standby mode ensures all current info is saved in RAM with minimum consumption of battery power.
Charge your laptop battery frequently with a battery charger or AC adapter. It is very important to clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months to make it dust free. You can use a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol to clean your laptop battery.
Try to set the screen brightness of the LCD panel of your laptop to the lowest comfortable level as very bright screen tends to consume more power from your battery.

Similarly it is better to get rid of the outer peripherals such as printers or digital cameras as they can still draw power from your laptop battery even when they are not used.

Turn of the unused features and technologies of your laptopo which are not frequently usable. For example, it is better to eject the CD or DVD when you are not using them as the optical drive has the tendency of reading CD or DVD it finds very often and this process consume extra battery power.

To save power, it is good idea to turn off the AirPort, Wi-Fi, IR radios and Bluetooth option when it is not required to use. Virus scan should be set only during the time you are usually plugged in as full-disk virus check by the hard drive and CPU consumes additional power from battery.

Opt for the power console applet to customize the power profiles on your laptop. Do not worry in case your notebook does not have power console applet option for most of the operating systems (starting from windows 98) have Power Options utility in Control Panel.

Turning off or at least disabling the PC Cards, FireWire devices and USB when not in use also saves battery power. In fact, disabling modem, network cards and USB ports consumes less battery power even when they are on. These devices are easily disabled in device manager.
You can use power saver option of your operating system to adjust the CPU processing power. Optimum CPU processes consume additional battery power and hence should be avoided if not required. Stop the auto start applications on your laptop, so that your laptop`s CPU can be stopped from doing unnecessary work.

With the above mentioned handy tips, you can truly increase the battery performance of your laptop.

Laptop accessories for your trip

This section will help you to prepare for your next trip abroad with your laptop accessories - everything you may need from finding a roaming internet access provider to guarding against computer theft while on the road.

Before you begin your road trip, there are a number of issues you need to address.

Toshiba Tecra 9100 AC Adapter 75W 15V 5A

First, there are hardware issues. You will need the correct laptop power ac adapter so you can plug in your laptop when you get to your destination (and points in between). There are 9 different power plugs in use around the globe. In addition. your laptop may not be prepared to handle the 240VAC power you will encounter in many countries, so you may need a step-down transformer.

Next, you will have to deal with the telephone jacks which do not conform with the standard RJ-11 phone jack we all take for granted while traveling around the U.S. There are 39 different telephone jacks in use worldwide. You must have a telephone adapter to handle each of the phone jacks where you plan to travel. There is also a problem of trying to hook up your laptop computer to a digital phone line – that will blow your modem and then you can not use your computer. A special digital signal tester is available to test the line to make certain you are trying to connect to a phone line that will handle analog signals you computer’s modem can handle.

Then there are the software issues. Laptops manufactured for use in the US have modems installed that do not recognize the dial tones used by most other countries. You will have to learn how to set your modem commands so your computer will ignore the strange dial tones and allow you to dial manually. Otherwise, your computer will not be able to function with your modem trying to recognize the strange dial tones.

Then there is a phenomenon called “tax impulsing”. This is a condition that exists in certain European countries phone systems to measure the amount of time you are on the phone. It is a regular “beep” on the phone line – we normally ignore it during voice calls – that will cause your laptop to disconnect. There is a tax impulse filter so you can have normal communication using your laptop.

TOSHIBA SATELLITE A15-S127 Battery 4400mAh

May be you can also take a additionl laptop battery for you trip.It ’s can let your laotps online longer than your only have one battery.

HP/Compaq Business NoteBook 6715B Battery charging problem

Today I got HP/Compaq Business NoteBook 6715B Battery for repair with the battery charging problem. It is a new model and we do not have a lot of experience with these laptops. The customer complained that the laptop will not charge the battery when it is plugged into the AC outlet.

HP/Compaq Business NoteBook 6715B Battery 6 cells 4400mAh

The laptop failure symptoms:

The laptop will not turn on when I try to start it from the battery. When the laptop is turned off and plugged into the AC outlet the battery charge LED doesn’t light up. I know that the battery is not charged and the LED should light up when I plug the laptop into the AC outlet. The laptop starts fine when it is plugged. When I move the mouse over the HP Power Icon in the lower right corner, the balloon will pop up and there is a line in there: Battery Remaining: N/A.

The problem repair procedure:

You can easily fix the problem just by updating the BIOS. HP says that the BIOS version should be at least v1.30. So, go to HP/COMPAQ website and click on Downloads. Select your laptop model and find any downloads for the BIOS. In the BIOS change history you will see the description of changes.

After I updated the BIOS, The HP/Compaq Business NoteBook 6715B Battery charging problem disappeared.

How to buy a good laptop?

Nowadays，more and more people choose to buy laptops.But they have no experience to buy a good laptop. So I would to share some buying a good laptop tips with us.There are a lot of laptop buying guides designed to help an inexperienced user to buy the right laptop. Some of these guides are good, some of them are not. Here is a laptop buying guide I like because it”s written on people’s language and not designed to sell you anything. This guide explains the difference between a budget notebook, a mainstream laptop and a gaming laptop and what you should expect from your laptop.

Here’s another helpful laptop buying guide.

From myself I would like to add some hardware related details you should think of before you buy a laptop

Laptop AC Adapter.

Make sure to check the size of the AC adapter before you buy a laptop. Usually, you do not see the AC adapter before you buy the laptop and open the box at home. You’ll be very surprised to see that your AC adapter is half-size of your computer. I did this mistake when I bought Dell Inspiron 1525, The AC adapter wasn’t designed for a portable computer at all.

Volume Control.

If you like listen music a lot then you have to choose a laptop with some kind of a hardware sound volume control (sound volume buttons or sound volume wheel located on the laptop). I prefer a volume wheel like on most Toshiba laptops. The volume wheel gives you almost instant access to the sound level. If you do not have a hardware control, then the only way to change the sound volume is through the software settings; it takes some time.

Sound System.

This is again for music lovers. Make sure to find a laptop with a good sound system. In my opinion, Harman/Kardon system is one of the best. I have Harman/Kardon speakers on my HP pavilion dv60000us and the sound is awesome. Sound on my Sony Vaio laptop sucks!

Laptop Memory Location.

The system board is one of the most important and most expensive parts of a notebook computer and you will get an advantage if you know what kind of the system board installed into the laptop. Some modern notebooks have memory integrated on the system board and offer only one extra memory slot to expand the memory size in the future. If onboard memory goes bad, you have to replace the entire system board. It’s OK if your laptop is still under warranty, but what if you have to pay cash for the repair? Also you cannot upgrade onboard memory. Other type of system boards do not have onboard memory, instead offer to you two memory slots on the system board. You will have to replace only the memory stick if it goes bad. System board with 2 memory slots usually can accept up to 2 GB of memory (1GB memory stick in each slot). So, if you plat to upgrade your laptop in the future, make sure that your laptop has both memory slots available for upgrade. Ask a sales person for details.

USB Port Location.

Check how USB ports are located on the laptop. If you plan to use USB devices like a wireless mouse, a flash drive or an external USB hard drive, then it would be nice to have couple USB ports on the side of your laptop not only on the back. Some laptops do not have USB ports on sides and to connect an USB device you have to turn the laptop.

Make sure that USB ports are not located too close to each other. Some older USB devices are big and when you plug it into one USB port, the second USB port becomes unusable.

Keyboard.

If you are a network administrator or have a job related to networking, then probably you use Windows run box a lot. To access the run box in Windows you use a shortcut (Windowd Key + R button). On some keyboards the Windows Key is located in the lower left corner, so you can use one hand to start it. On some keyboards the Windows Key is located in the upper right corner and to start the run box you have to use both hands. Choose the right keyboard for you. For some people it’s not a problem at all, but what if you use this shortcut hundreds times a day?

Parallel Port.

Very often this option is overlooked. If you plan to connect a printer to your laptop via a parallel port then you have to find a laptop with this option. Many modern laptops are designed for modern USB printers and they do not have the parallel port at all.

Laptop Warranty.

If you think that notebook computers do not fail or they fail only during the first year of exploitation, think again. In my opinion, an extended 3or 4 years warranty is a must for any notebook computer. For example I’ll give you approximate prices for some Toshiba Satellite A75 laptop parts if you decide to repair it in Toshiba Repair Center.

System board – from $400

LCD screen – from $550

Pentium CPU – from$300

CPU cooling fan – from $80

Keyboard- from $70

Do not forget to add labor charges -� from $60/hour

Laptop hardware is very specific such as hp dv8000 battery and you can just buy it in any computer store or online shop udtek.com

After you reading this article,may be it’s will give you a good suggestion.