Laptop Battery Died

Ughhh... The times of woe now have ended -- $150 later. Over the past year, my laptop battery would run out of juice after turning on for barely an hour with light use. It got worse and worse to the point that a full-charged battery would barely last ten minutes. There were times where I didn't use my laptop for over a month and it would boot and shut right back down automatically -- I had left it previously fully charged. All of this made it a plug-in only laptop, which kind of defeated the purpose.

New Battery or New Computer
The thought of using the computer only while plugged in for the rest of time crossed my mind. Despite needing a cord, it was still pretty portable. However, pretty portable wasn't tether-less or as free as just worrying about finding a place to put the computer down. This battery did last about four years, which was kind of nice. For three years of that life, the thing performed reasonably well.

So, what to do? Buy a new battery for about CAD$ 150 or buy a whole new laptop with newer technology for about $500 -- USB 3.0 would be nice. A price difference of $350 or over three times, that seemed like a pretty easy decision. It even seemed wasteful to get rid of a perfectly good, moderately used laptop that was already set up the way I liked it. But the prospect of getting something four years newer in a slightly smaller, more portable size was very tempting.

New Laptop Battery

Stay with the Old
I stuck with my current laptop and decided to just replace the battery. The price factored in a lot, as did my familiarity with the device. It got to me within about a week and came very well packaged. Bubble wrapped and then sandwiched between two pieces of foam. Having to wait for the courier and sign for it was the only annoying part of the entire shopping experience. I swapped the battery out, plugged it in to charge and was good the go. The nicest part was knowing that the manufacture date was only a few months prior to when it arrived. For such an old computer, there were concerns about getting a really old battery with a lot of wear. Everything turned out fine. Here's to another 3 years? Doubt I'll want to use this thing then.