On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 01:00:22PM -0400, William Park via Talk wrote:
My laptop, T450, has 2 batteries, one of which is dead. Instead of getting a new battery, I chose a cheaper solution... 3 Lenovo power supplies throughout the house. So, if I get a new laptop, I have to get rid of all the old stuffs? :-(
Yeah they use a power supply design for a number of generations but eventually change it. In the case of the Thinkpad P1 they used one power supply from gen 2 to gen 7, but gen 8 has gone to USB-C PD. Thinkpads have as far as I know used the round barrel from sometime in the 90s to around 2013 when the T440/T540/W540 came out. I do know my W530 could use a T430 power supply but only to charge the battery when it was off. To run it needed a larger power supply that had the round connector but with a flattened side that didn't fit in the smaller thinkpads. Then they had the rectangle power conector from the Xx40 generation up until they switched to USB-C. Smaller models switched a few years ago, while high end machines that needed more than 100W only swithed in the last year it seems. My wife's P17 has that, as did the P1 gen 7 I had that got damaged. Apparently the P1 gen 7 could charge via USB-C PD but it required a non standard 20V 7A (rather than the 5A limit the standard provides) power supply to do it, so I think it was only really used with docking stations specifically designed for it. And now it seems everythign has USB-C PD connectors. Benefits seem to be using a standard rather than proprietary connector, and also you can connect to any USB-C port on the machine (so take your pick of left or right side), and when not charging you have an extra free USB-C port to use. For people with the 20V rectangular power supply there exist very cheap adapters to allow them to be used with many of the USB-C PD laptops so you don't have to throw them away apparently. -- Len Sorensen