Shitpoet Slimegirl
remember when all laptops had removable, swappable battery packs that you could eject and slap back into the back of your computer like a gun magazine reload action?
do you remember what they took from you???
@SigmaOne I have a spare battery for my X200 that is in really bad health but I keep around just so I can do a funny reload action with my laptop where I drop one battery onto the ground and slap the next one in
@thufie I should get a second one for my T480 so I can do that
And so I can carry around a battery instead of a whole charger
@thufie oh god or the ones that had two batteries, and you could swap one out without losing power
@thufie the chad PSP with an easily swappable battery, replacements sold in stores vs the virgin Vita with a non-removable internal battery.
@riley I was one of the lucky people who had an Xperia Play. Removable battery, pseudo-vita slide-out gamepad for playing emulated games on android gingerbread. We've only gone downhill.
@thufie sometimes my Linux laptop has a weird time awaking from sleep if I disconnect the power. It basically looks like it's bricked.
It's weirdly intermittent but I normally resolve it by doing the battery reload and boring back up.
I guess on the one hand I should just fix the issue but I don't know what I'd do if this happened with a sealed in battery. Wait for it to die and see if that clears a weird state?
@thufie ThinkPads still do
@datn my T480s does not unfortunately :(
can't have shit these days, I struggled finding a recent-enough laptop that had a fucking audio jack and enough usb ports to actually use it...
computing hardware these days is very anti-I/O devices and anti-modularity but I can't shell out money for one of the fancy hacker laptops I see linux people with on here like the MNT or something, so I keep maintaining my older thinkpad for when I have to actually use I/O instead of just running the increasingly more demanding software...
@thufie oh bummer, sorry! i really thought all TPs had ‘em. i am deeply in love with my X260 and its docking station. my former employer sold it to me for a pittance because it had a US keyboard, and none of the Germans wanted it :)
but also generally i know what you mean and bemoan that state of affairs. i can only hope that stuff like the Framework and the MNT Reform becomes more common.
@thufie Yeah I'm still running a T-430
@thufie That's their way of making you buy a new laptop every two years.
I still have a working Gateway laptop made in 2010, replaced the battery 4 times, and replaced the hard drive once.
@thufie Same with smartphones, it used to be that you could just buy a replacement Li-ion battery for $5
@thufie Just another method of planned obsolence
@willowashmaple @thufie Apparently, even when phones had swappable batteries, hardly anyone did. Nowadays, manufacturers probably see little point as, especially with higher end models, hardly anyone buys the phone outright - they've persuaded a lot of people to effectively rent the handset as part of the contract, so swap it every year or two, possibly even before the battery depletes to annoying levels.
@willowashmaple @thufie Added onto which, soldered in batteries allegedly allow thinner and more water resistant cases. Even so, it would be nice to allow some means of replacement for the handful who do hang onto their phone until other components become obsolete. My Moto G8+ battery lasts about half a day of intensive use, but will randomly hang for a few minutes several times a day - yet it has plenty of spare storage and RAM.
@thufie Phones used to have this utility too!
Amazing what a simple and lovely thing it was that we lost.
@thufie glad i got a t460 with the hot swappable battery
@darkwitchclaire @thufie The Thinkpad T440 I had before this and the A485 I use currently both have the same problem where they randomly shut off when on battery 🔋 only every few weeks.
I've replaced the internal and external battery on both, pretty sure it's the external battery dragging the system voltage down and causing a brownout.
Kinda burns me on dual battery 🔋 designs 😢
@thufie i wont ever forget that betrayal.
@thufie I had a thinkpad with removable internal battery & drives. pop 2 catches on the sides & the entire keyboard hinged up to replace them.
Drive & battery were each in a little plastic enclosure with custom connectors, like they were meant to be pulled out & left on the side for a while.
@thufie I just bought a Fairphone and having an accessible and exchangeable battery just feels right. (Although I really can't say anything bad about the lifespan of that in my P20 lite, which is still going strong.)
@thufie but yeah, in general, this was my thought: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=h2efyUKLO9w
@thufie Man, I would love that back, along with the desktop battery charger and the extra battery you could slap into the hotswap bays. I remember if you had one with two bays, with the hot swap bays capable of having a ZIP drive, LS120, floppy, or some form of optical, or another battery meant you could get a 3-battery monster that would last longer than a commercial driver's hours...
@thufie Remember? I'm using a Thinkpad T410 right now, which is on its third battery or so. ... I probably need to get the heat-sink re-gooped and the dust blown out, but it's still chugging along like a champ.
@thufie i miss this so much…
@thufie hey that's my laptop in the picture!
@thufie because of user-replaceable parts, my 2007 black MacBook is still useable (albeit running Linux instead of MacOS). Once my 2013 retina MacBook Pro's battery dies, not sure if I'll ever use it again, even though it, too, has linux on it. It was fun to watch Twilight with my daughter and "hey, that's my black MacBook in the movie!!'
@thufie it was a pain to install Linux on it (2007 MacBook) though. Had to follow https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/ and https://mesom.de/efi32boot/index.html
@thufie i would love to have this again
along with other features that have been relegated to Fancy Gaming Laptops, such as a keyboard with usable arrow keys, or a numpad
-F
@thufie I remember making serious decisions about how big of an extended battery I wanted. One laptop I had, the battery was on the bottom, so the extended battery angled the whole thing up like a kickstand.
It was absolutely obnoxious and wonderful
@rolenthedeep I still have a Thinkpad X200 like that. The battery has the little rubber feetsies on it is so cute
@thufie the dock for my t530 has little rubber feetsies that gently cradle the extended battery. It makes me happy every time I use it
@thufie
I remember when that was a thing for cell phone too. I had a galaxy S3 and would just swap out the batteries (I had bought a few spares on ebay) and get a full week of phone usage. I miss that so much.
Now just replacing batteries at the end of their life is a pain, and no one on their right mind would do it once a day.
@thufie really really really want a 1st-person video of someone reloading a laptop battery like an FPS gun now
@thufie I remember when phones could have a fresh battery installed by popping them open, having a sub-panel to protect the electronics and only service the battery. It didnt matter that my earliest attempts to run Cyanogenmod were battery-hungry, i had a few more batteries in my bag pre-charged and ready to go. Batteries are usually the first component to age out, especially in high temp contexts, so its also kinda anti-repair.
@thufie Ah the good old days before batteries glued into place. 🫶
@thufie These days we just call that a Thinkpad, and we still use them.
@thufie No. Because I still have my old laptop and my old phone, and refuse to upgrade until I find something that has the things I want and need. I've had this phone since 2014, I want my changeable battery and I wont upgrade til I get it, fucker!
@thufie I see a ThinkPad 😻
@thufie My laptop still has this feature, although it is getting on a bit, so that could be why.
@thufie my Thinkpads have them… do you really imply this is no longer a thing for newer models? Aaaaah!
@thufie remember when laptops sometimes had TWO batteries and you could swap out the external one while the device was on? Those were the times...
@thufie on mobile phones too
@thufie Actually, mine (a rather old one from ALDI) still has and you can still buy replacement batteries for 38€.
@thufie my laptop I use for school this has this still. It’s a lifesaver, sometimes 
@thufie yes i do. and just yesterday i tried to find out how i could change the battery in my mom‘s laptop. turns out it would involve nearly dismantling the whole thing…
@hugo I am practicing doing this once I fix my old thinkpad
@thufie my laptop still has it.
Actually, I purchased a new battery park last year bwcause the old one reached the end of its life span.
@thufie the Thinkpad T-series used to have an internal and a removable battery, so you could hot-swap. So good.
@thufie is that a Thinkpad 230X/220X
@_sharpLimefox it seems a bit wide to be an X-series but idk I just copied the picture from something @theonefreeman posted somewhere
@thufie *laughs in thinkpad x200 daily driver*
Though my other laptop has best of both worlds, an external and an internal battery*
*the internal battery is disconected cause it likes to hang when asleep, and i need a way to hard reset it
@thufie Yes, because I have the last T-series thinkpad with a removable battery
And a pile of ProBooks which have those too, although they're running without batteries right now because server
It's especially fun on the Thinkpad since it also has an internal battery so you can remove the external one without shutting down