Despite the fact that Newegg.com said that it was still in the process of charging me for the item, it was UPS that woke me up this morning. That extra $25 really did me good, but what pissed me off was the fact that the problem wasn't the battery at all.

The problem was the charger reporting incorrectly. The laptop read that it was receiving a charge, but apparently, it wasn't strong enough to charge the battery. Orienting it like TV rabbit ears did the trick.

On the bright side, now I have two batteries I can use. The project can now continue.

On another note, my ZPMs are not fully charged yet. Waiting for them to do so.

Naw. Windows isn't the culprit. The laptop's hardware was reporting it via those bright lights in the front that indicate whether or not it's plugged in, the device is on, the battery is charging/fully charged/nearly depleted, the harddrive is working, and/or the SD card is being read.

The "faulty" component I've found was the cord itself. If that's truly the case, a splice & dice operation can take care of it.

btw & atm, I'm working on getting a handle on how pucrunch works, so that I may include it in the game.

Get a new laptop!
I just got a Lenovo ideapad S10, and I love it.

On another semi-related problem.

My laptop charger is busted as of a few hours ago. Currently, I have about an hour's worth of battery power remaining, so after that, that's pretty much it.

A brighter note: I've taken apart the charger and identified a problem very similar to my friend's laptop charger (which was successfully repaired). If it's what I think it is, the laptop charger will have a new lease on life... though it'll look even nicer after I've applied duct tape to keep the thing together after the repair.

Duct tape... a very good thing. Lets you know you've repaired something.

The laptop charger was successfully fixed. It still doesn't work up to my expectations, but at least it *works*. The duct tape wrapping the broken shell is evidence to the repair. I may take some photographs of the repair and what was fixed later on tonight.

It's a Toshiba-brand charger, compatible with the Satellite P205 series.

The problem was exactly the same in my friend's laptop charger by Acer: The inductor near the power input fell right off. Putting the thing back on solved the problem.

My friend's charger was much more of a problem than mine because his pretty much refused to come apart, forcing me to use a steak knife to saw through the edges so I could get enough leverage with a flathead screwdriver. After taking it apart, all was gravy.