Your X61 charger shorted out, now what?

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The IBM ThinkPad X61 charger has a little bit of a weakness: At a certain point in its lifespan it has the propensity to short out completely. While it won’t cause a fire or cause your laptop to crash, it does have the annoyance factor of taking your laptop out of commission once your battery is drained. With no way to charge your laptop again, you can’t use it when you need to. That’s the Achilles heel of many of these computers nowadays: The power charger and laptop power cord. It’s certainly annoying; I’ve had it happen more than a number of times on a lot of different computers. No fun.

The ThinkPad X61, while a great laptop, has had some of these issues as well. It’s probably one of the most complained about things with these laptops, but fortunately it’s not something that can’t be fixed (don’t you love double negatives?). If you take your X61 charger into any reputable and certified IBM repair station there’s a good chance they’ll be able to take care of your charger and either give you a new one, or repair it for a nominal fee. If your X61 is still under warranty, there’s a good chance that they’ll do it for free, and free is always a good thing!

If not, you could always go out a buy a new X61 charger. These are pretty easy to find, actually. Just about every computer store sells these, particularly the ones online. The nice thing about the X61 charger is that it’s not just X61-specific. The same charger works on all sorts of ThinkPad models, from the X60 onward to the higher-end models.

If you get the OEM charger you’ll probably not spend a whole lot of money for it. I’m going to guesstimate that a standard ThinkPad charger is going to run you in the range of about $15. At least that’s probably the case on Amazon (a quick check of Amazon confirms that…check the “shopping” links below this post).

Now if you really want to go fancy, check out a universal laptop power cord (basically a charger). These are a little bit more expensive than OEM chargers, but they can be used on just about any other type of laptop that’s come out on the market in the last 10 years or so. These are great if you just happen to have a lot of laptops of different types, or are planning on going to another brand after the ThinkPad X61.