Notebooks with two battery slots

[Quicksilver_]

I have a customer who's looking for a notebook with two battery slots. Is this possible, and what brands most commonly have them?

 

[burritoincognito]

First off, you'll be looking into business lines.

Second, most have a second battery as an option that attaches to the bottom of the laptop, rather than in place of an optical drive.

You might be able to find a few that you can swap out the optical drive in place of a battery, but that's becoming a less popular option these days. Latitudes should have the option, but EliteBooks have slung under batteries. I think Thinkpads do as well. They're referred to as slice batteries, and will raise the unit up from sitting level.

 

[Erasmus354]

I have a customer who's looking for a notebook with two battery slots. Is this possible, and what brands most commonly have them?

Do they require separate access to the batteries (allowing for hotswap)?

Panasonic Toughbook 31, has optional media bay battery.

HP offers extended life (slice) batteries for a number of their machines, but it might cover up the internal battery.

Dell has moved away from media bay batteries and now offers slice batteries instead. Once again, potentially limiting the ability to hot swap between batteries.

 

[Roman79]

First off, you'll be looking into business lines.

Second, most have a second battery as an option that attaches to the bottom of the laptop, rather than in place of an optical drive.

You might be able to find a few that you can swap out the optical drive in place of a battery, but that's becoming a less popular option these days. Latitudes should have the option, but EliteBooks have slung under batteries. I think Thinkpads do as well. They're referred to as slice batteries, and will raise the unit up from sitting level.

Agreed, I think you'll only find this in business lines of notebooks. Have a look at Lenovo ThinkPads, they offer two options depending on the model:

1. 2nd battery via the UltraBay (takes the place of the optical drive), you can also get a 2nd HDD this way.
2. 2nd battery via a "Slice battery", which attaches to the bottom of the laptop fairly seamlessly.

Generally (but not always) slice batteries are available for Ultrabook style laptops since they are too thin to have an UltraBay. Pretty sure you can get a slice battery for the ThinkPad X1 and T430U, among others.

 

[mart20012]

Waaaaaaay back, I bought a Dell d820 that had an option of a battery to fit where the DVD drive would go in. I'm sure they still have business models like that too nowadays.

 

[pxc]

I have a Thinkpad with an UltraBay battery option. IMO it's not worth it. The battery that fits in there has less than 1/3rd the capacity of my stock primary battery. It would be better to just have 2 x 9 cell batteries, and swap when needed.

The slice battery mentioned above is probably a better option.

 

[mngl1500]

Inspiron 8100 you could have 2 batteries or a battery and a floppy drive....

 

[Erasmus354]

Waaaaaaay back, I bought a Dell d820 that had an option of a battery to fit where the DVD drive would go in. I'm sure they still have business models like that too nowadays.

Nope, they offer slice batteries now. If you search Dell for secondary battery the ones for the D800/D600 lines were the last media bay batteries offered.

 

[A15G]

HP EliteBook series.