Genes - I did try your suggestions - and the Dell won't power up. Wiggling the adapter didn't make a difference. Kay - I'm curious why Dell thought it might be a battery? And I don't have any steps I can walk you through beyond what Genes outlined. Unfortunately, my Dell won't power up. There are replacement batteries on Amazon for just over $20 - so maybe it's worth trying that in case a Dell just won't power up if the batter is bad - whether it's plugged in or not. --------------------- On a separate note, I did get the battery replacement for my lenovo - and it works. Now I can unplug my laptop and get about 3-4 hours (which isn't great - but running on battery is not what I usually need). I did calibrate it once. Charge it fully - let it discharge fully until it shut off. Then recharged it fully. The battery came with instructions to do that once. I am confused, however, as I thought Li-ion batteries didn't need that at all - and that batteries that do need that need a few cycles of it. So I'm wondering if I should go through a couple of more charge and discharge cycles. Thank you. Lynn.

A risk with third party batteries is that they not-infrequently are lower quality and have less capacity than OEM versions. I personally never take the chance. A dead battery in a laptop is like a needed major repair on a car - you go the cheaper route if the rest still works fine, or it's a good excuse to buy a whole new replacement. But even when going the cheaper route and getting a replacement battery, i think it's a false economy to buy an aftermarket brand. Capacity is rated in milliAmp hours, for laptops it's usually a number in the single digit thousands ( 3000-9999 mAh hours)

I got a great deal from a battery supply store that also has an ebay store, the same battery that was in mine and the price was great, you may want to check ebay.

Read your manual. It probably has the guidelines best suited for 'your laptops design and its circuitry . Toshiba here was first time ever taken out of the factory box about mid December 2007, so its 1.5 yrs old, I don't know how long it sat on shelf - its battery right now shows a 6% wear level, 44000 mWh design capacity new / currently 41151 mWh at 100% of charge. Probably more than 99 percent of the time its on the AC adapter and runs 24/7. Sleeps after 100 minutes of non use which really doesn't happen every day like I should. I should force sleep for it & then maybe I'd force more normal sleep on me too ;) Battery is under the left palm rest where I feel no heat. It would be rare for me in the things I do to shut down windows before moving the laptop while the on battery. Only have the one ac adapter, meant to buy another for a second location but price always makes me dizzy.