Not a good week for my laptops. The XP laptop, a Thinkpad R60e, popped up this alarming message yesterday.

It was working perfectly the previous day. It hadn't been losing charge. Annoying as I think the R60e is out of warranty now. However, a bit of searching, and it's Google to the rescue. It looks like this is a known fault with these batteries.

If you follow that link you'll see that there's a replacement programme when they fail in this manner. Download the utility provided and you can see if you're eligible for a replacement. It looks like I am (apparently I squeak in under the warranty + 6 months period). Suddenly I don't regret getting a Thinkpad.

The issue seems to affect the following models: R60, R60e, T60, T60p, X60, X60s, X60 Tablet, Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, Z61p, Z60t, Z61t.

Update: Battery arrived today via DHL. Not bad - I ran the utility last thing on Thursday, so that's basically one and a bit business days. Steps to "fix": Download and run utility. Enter address in browser page opened by utility. Result: Happy customer.