Using Battery with Charger

m13m13

Contrary to advice (herein) and websites that sell replacement batteries, my Aspire D210 netbook does NOT seem to work with the battery removed and the AC adapter plugged in.  It is supposed to help prevent wear on the battery by keeping it from possibly being subjected to overheating.

 

I always use my netbook while it's plugged in, never on battery power.  That may be causing some kind of problem; I don't know.  I recently noticed one of the blinky lights on the front doing a weird half-orange/half-blue blink, then I noticed when I hovered my cursor over the battery icon on the desktop status bar that it said some really low percentage, like 25%. I hadn't paid any attention to it before (my bad).

 

I know that from always having the adapter plugged in and having the unit on my lap, the connector is taking a beating.  It seems a little wobbly, but hasn't caused a problem before.  I wondered when it was going to; I guess it's now.

 

So I went shopping for a new battery, thinking that might keep me from being without my computer altogether any minute.  That's where I started seeing this advice about running with the battery not installed. So, being gullible, I disconnected it and tried to start the computer.  I think I broke something doing that -temporarily.  It wouldn't start.  I put the battery back in and restarted the netbook, and I got this "do you want us to repair your broken machine?" type message.  I clicked yes, and after some time it seemed to work.  Back to where I was.  The battery indicator shows percentages that are all over the map.  For one thing, sometimes it shows percentage "remaining" and sometimes it shows percentage "available."  How confusing is that?  At first I didn't notice the difference (because it wasn't from anything I was doing differently).  So the percentage would climb up to about 100% then fall down around 85% etc.  All this while the adapter was plugged in, as usual.

 

Now I don't know if I should be looking to replace the battery or what.  I am now setting the unit on a hard surface on my lap to keep the connector a little stable (which seems to help with the blinky light situation).  But why do all these advice mongers tell you that you can operate with the battery not installed when it just won't work that way?  It almost broke my machine trying.

 

Also, as I was shopping online for a replacement battery, I noticed that there are 3-, 6-, and 9-cell batteries for sale whose ads all say they will work in this machine.  The machine says it has a 3-cell battery.  Are they truly interchangeable?  I'm skeptical about that, and I don't need any new problems.

 

Can someone please help?  I'm sure this is basic information, but I haven't had to deal with it before and would really appreciate any info you could offer.

 

      -Denise