Has my laptop battery reached its maximum useful life and needs to be replaced with a new one?

Question

I bought my MSI S250 notebook PC in Sept. 2005 and used it moderately, maybe 15 hours every week, 4 times weekly. I always connected my PC battery charger to a wall outlet while using the PC. Every now and then I drained the battery power to zero and fully charged it. Sometimes I also disconneted the battery charger and let the PC run on the battery until it was fully discharged. These past several weeks I noticed that my 4-cell lithium battery gave me only one hour of uninterrupted PC usage instead of the maximum of 1.5 hours. I cannot start my PC anymore. When I connect my PC to a wall outlet through the PC's transformer/charger, the small ight on the charger does not glow steady but blinks. And there's no blue light emitted on the front edge of the PC. Probably the battery needs to be replaced with a new one. Thanks for your advice.

Answer 1

hmm
a laptop battery shouldn't go out that quick.
if you have warranty contact technical support from that company.
every consumer electronic battery has a certain amount of charge cycles (like an iPod can be charged a couple thousand times *i'm making this example up* before it dies completely and cannot be charged).
so if you always kept your laptop connected to a charger, which might be bad for the battery, i'd expect 2-3 years of life.
it didn't even last 2 years, so I'd go and contact the company.

Answer 2

First, try just taking the battery out, plugging the computer in to the AC power and seeing if it turns on. Then put the battery back in and try it again.

If that doesn't work, first I would take the computer to a place that has a service center, like best buy or circuit city and see if they can test your computer with a new battery and see if it works with a different one. Often times they have a bin of batteries for just such an occasion.

Then, I would take the battery in to someplace that tests batteries.