Sony Laptop Locks Out non-Sony Battery
Yesterday I received a generic replacement battery that I had ordered for my Sony VGN-FS840/W laptop. When placed in the laptop the battery indicator flashes rapidly. The laptop will not turn on with the battery inserted, even if the AC cord is also used. The battery shows no charge and does not charge. Reading online I learned that Sony apparently uses a hardware lock in certain of its laptop models to prevent the use of non-Sony replacement batteries. See, for example, these blog posts.
Some people, using Windows, are able to avoid this problem by using msconfig to delete the Sony program, ISBMgr.exe, that monitors for non-Sony batteries, but I am running GNU/Linux and not Windows. Some others using Windows also find that deleting the program doesn’t help because Sony has some hardware or BIOS method of disallowing any non-Sony battery. I think this must be the case for my model laptop.
I’m pondering who can be sued over this. Post your ideas on who the plaintiff(s) should be and what the claims should be in the comments. I’d also be happy with a technical fix, if anyone has one.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
IBM/Lenovo has been doing this for years. A few years back I wanted to add an internal MiniPCI wireless card to a laptop that didn’t have one. The ThinkPad has an algorithm in which (in the BIOS) it will disable MiniPCI cards that don’t conform to a certain MAC Address formula – translation: get your MiniPCI cards ONLY from IBM/Lenovo.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Random ideas.
Don’t have a fix – reverse engineering is a possibility but it might be a bigger can of worms that it seems. Having recently dealt with the engineering of a high heat generating electronic system, risking a laptop fire to save a few bucks would NOT be on the top of my list. On the other hand if you can’t even use a Sony battery on Linux then “those is fighting words”…
You might be able to argue antitrust, but the printer industry has been doing similar things with mixed legal results – nothing that can be considered a slam-dunk against this practice. It’s also pretty common in other more subtle ways in plenty of other industries as well.
Some background on battery technology. There are a great variety of technologies that are similar but differ in terms of their discharge curves (graphs of voltage and current vs. time). Replacing batteries can be a tricky thing because the batteries for portable use these days are running on the ragged edge and you must match battery chemistry to application duty cycle carefully. This often means tailoring your hardware design (specifically the power condition/distribution circuits) to a specific battery chemistry and even battery vendor and model. Mismatching the two can make lithium rechargeables in particular literally catch fire. There’s an excellent article about this in EDN (an electrical engineering trade mag)
http://www.edn-europe.com/newbatterytechnologiesholdpromiseperilforportablesystemdesigners+article+149+Europe.html
So based on this, realize that Sony could argue with some justification in court that they are simply providing a necessary safety features to assure either compliance with safety laws and/or protect against liability. All they need to do is wave around pictures of “spontaneously combusted” laptop we’ve all seen in the last few years to create an open-and-shut case against you. If however you could show that the 3rd party battery is either of equivalent design or even is the same supplier and model as that used by Sony you could nullify this argument.
Yes, of course, they are also raking in a premium for it too. I used to work for HP and the only thing keeping the company afloat right now is the fact they make 5-20x more on the ink and paper supplies than on the entire rest of the inkjet printer margins. They push inkjets hard because they still have to pay licensing and/or outsource for laserjet hardware and cartridges technologies. Naturally that’s why you get inkjet printers for free with computers these days. Razors and razor blades.
I have to wonder with Sony being one of the luxury brands of PC (I’d place Apple and IBM/Lenovo in the same category of superior form-and-fit with premium price category) whether this could also be used against you in court – “if you can afford the the BMW you can afford the service and part cost”.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Have you considered that you may just have bought a shitty battery? My experience is that generic is often a synonym for worse quality.
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
give yourself a slap on the forehead and don’t ever buy a sony product again, be it cd, camera, laptop, whatever.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Americans always wanting to sue huh… and you wonder why so many people want to top you guys off.
June 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
This isn’t surprising coming from Sony. The company has a long history of user lock-in attempts, like the overpriced memorystick, for example. They would probably fill the batteries up with proprietary Sonytronic® electrons if they could.
On the other hand, Sony did lose about half a billion dollars recalling explosive laptop batteries over the past couple of years, so they’ll probably claim they’re just being careful in this case.
Amit Takin
http://www.techbaba.com/faqs/laptop+question+answers.aspx
March 5th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I’ve been running a 3rd party battery for a 5 year old vgn-s150. Today, for the first time in about 2 months, I got this lockout message. What a nuisance! And why now??
I understand about battery problems, but let’s get real here. 2 months with no lockouts and no problems…
I terminated the process mentioned above and I’m running just fine…the only side effect I can see is that the battery indicator on the laptop is blinking, not steady.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:48 am
So we are in deeep shit !
i will never buy sony vaio again ,,,
but damn it i want my money back !!!!
they should put a warrnig about it
any battery not manufactured by sony will not work in your laptop !