I just got a pretty good deal on an old ThinkPad (think 10 years old now) to use as a beater for screwing with ArchLinux and hopefully to find a real use for. It’s in great shape like it was never really used, but big shock, the battery is at 50% effective capacity and what’s there disappears in less than an hour.
Would you bother buying a battery replacement for it? On one hand I want it to actually be usable on the go because that was sort of the point. On the other, while replacement batteries exist, I’m worried that they’re already very old themselves and already “expired”. Would you take the chance? I don’t want to let this thing go to waste when it’s still perfectly usable, in fact it’s pretty fast.
I bought a new battery for my Asus gaming laptop from 2013 and slapped mint on it, currently my octoprint server (through docker) and bench computer with no complaints. Frankly I probably didn’t need to replace the battery as realistically it’s not mobile but it Insulates it from power failures I guess. The older hardware works totally fine in Linux, and to me is an easy way to bring new life to old hardware.
All in all I spent $90 on a new battery and an ssd, which I have 0 regrets about either.