Laptop Battery and Older Memory

[tiggerfan]

I recently got an old Toshiba Portege 7140CT to use as a travel unit. It's actually pretty good but has 2 issues I need to deal with.

1. Not enough RAM, only 192MB. I can upgrade to 320 (still not enough).

I would like to find the best deal I can so does anyone know of a place that sells older laptop memory (looking for 256 MB of SDRAM 144 pin).

Of course I can always go with E-bay.

2. Battery issue

I think I need to replace it but want to make sure the issue is the battery.

Basically what happens is the battery will say it is 100% charged, I unplug from the wall outlet and it almost instantly goes down to 0%.

Then if I plug it back in it goes just as fast from 0 to 100.

So is it the battery not taking the charge or is it the charger inside the laptop.

I can easily get a new battery but don't want to do it if the issue is with the laptop itself (I can live without being on batteries of course)

So any thoughts ?

[Opus1guy]

Originally Posted by tiggerfan

Basically what happens is the battery will say it is 100% charged, I unplug from the wall outlet and it almost instantly goes down to 0%.

Then if I plug it back in it goes just as fast from 0 to 100.

So is it the battery not taking the charge or is it the charger inside the laptop.

That's very typical behavior of a dead lithium-ion battery. I don't think it has anything to do with the charging of it. I think you just need a new battery.

[Captain Video]

It is possible that the battery is "out of sync' with the notebook. Try this:

With the battery installed and the computer plugged in and turned on, remove the battery. Wait about thirty seconds, and then reinstall the battery. If it is a sync problem, this should fix it. You will know if this was the problem, because the charge light will now stay orange, showing that it is charging.

This was a common problem with these computers.

No guarantees, But in the past, I was a service tech for acompany that sold refurb Toshiba notebooks, including the 7100-7200 series Porteges, and this fixed many battery problems for us.

For memory, try http://www.kahlon.com/, or more specifically http://www.kahlon.com/rm13470_Toshib...ge_7140CT.html. They have competitive pricing, but more important, their stuff works!

[flynnibus]

Memory is cheap for this laptop.. but its still $70 to max it out.

And at 320mb of RAM... that's miserable for a machine running anything but bare bare bones XP these days.

Batteries are harder to find.. but prices seem to infer about $120-$170 for a battery. That's almost $250 to dump into an ancient laptop. Not worth it IMO.

Spend $500 and get a modern laptop and keep this old one for a geek project somewhere.

[tiggerfan]

Actually a little checking on E-bay and I could get the momory and the battery for less than 100

All I intend to use this for is net surfing and trip reports, but i agree i might upgrade in the future.

This was a trade with sister and family to give them my Dell 5100 and I got this in return since it was inadequate for their primary laptop.

[Captain Video]

I'm actually using one of these Portege 7100/7200 series machines at this very moment to type this message! It has 320 mb of memory and is running Windows XP with no problem. I use it daily to cruise online - mainly MiceChat - and I have no problems whatsoever. It is probably my most used computer.

[tiggerfan]

Good to hear Capt.

I do think this works fine for my basic purposes, for work and such I used my Dell 1505, but for Micechat/trip reports/etc this seems ok.

Just need to decide about memory/battery stuff since the battery does seem to be dead