Batteries: you're right, they're not cheap. For the T4x's I would buy a 9-cell lion for ~ $100. Almost the price of the laptop! "Afraid that something will bre

Batteries: you're right, they're not cheap. For the T4x's I would buy a 9-cell lion for ~ $100. Almost the price of the laptop! "Afraid that something will break" -- FWIW, I've replaced almost every FRU in those old Thinkpads at one point or another, and find them really easy to repair compared to other brands. But an R31, that's getting pretty up there in years. It's probably getting hard to find a spare for parts, let alone a relatively unused one that's got some years left in it as a backup machine.