HP 15C CE ships with mediocre batteries

[RPNerd]

TL;DR - If you buy a 15C CE, the very first thing you should do with it is toss the batteries and install some good ones.

Longer version: I bought a 15C CE a few months back, decided that I liked it so much that I went and bought another one (both units from a stockist here in the UK) and also ordered the 16C overlay and a few other things from TCS.

The first thing I did with the second unit was to update the firmware to eliminate some of the 16C bugs, then I toggled it into 16C mode, used it for a couple of days and then put it away for about a week until I needed it again. At that point in time it was unresponsive and I needed to prod the reset button behind the battery door (mumble mumble damn screw mumble mumble). We're back in business. Temporarily. The next day it was unresponsive again.

Thinking initially that this might be a bug related to 16C mode I put the machine back in 15C mode and it froze again almost immediately, so the next thing I tried was replacing the batteries. This fixed everything.

I think we all know that CR2032 lithium batteries fall into either of two categories. They are either from an established brand that supplies quality batteries like Energizer, Panasonic, GP, Maxell, Duracell (I've never had a lithium battery of theirs leak. Alkalines on the other hand...) etc. or they are from some unknown (usually) Chinese brand that produces batteries with huge internal resistance, low capacity and no shelf life. Unfortunately, it looks like the batteries that HP loads into new HP 15C CE units fall into the second category if they fail in a unit that's barely a couple of weeks old.

Do yourselves a favour. Before you start accumulating data that you might want to hold onto in your 15C CE units, yank out those cheap batteries and throw something better in instead.