CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to ALL:

 CA> The last time I used the laptop it complained about a low battery 
 CA> and seemed to be unaware it was plugged into the wall? When I 
 CA> removed the battery pack I found a button on the side that, when 
 CA> pushed, lit up three of a total of five 'green dots'. No mention 
 CA> is made of this button or the green lights in the user manual

Could this be an aftermarket rather than the original battery?

 CA> and now I notice pushing the button does _not_ light _any_ of 
 CA> these dots. My first inclination was that the power cord
 CA> had breaks in the wiring but now am wondering if the battery has
 CA> internal shorting? Maybe it's both?

Maybe.  Or maybe there's some other defect in the charging circuitry.

 CA> Calling DELL connected me to India where a seemingly nice/polite 
 CA> person tried desperately to speak in English to me. I had to ask 
 CA> him to repeat every other phrase he spoke. Terminology doesn't 
 CA> lend itself to mispronunciation but he patiently repeated the 
 CA> phrases until I could grasp the meanings of what he was saying.

This kind of thing drives me nuts.

 CA> Short story: DELL does not sell parts even where they have a 
 CA> physical presence. All parts must be ordered through India who 
 CA> then passes the order to Texas where the parts are actually 
 CA> shipped from. This requires about 10 working days to _ship_ then 
 CA> whatever time it takes for the actually delivery over land to the 
 CA> destination.

 CA> I did not bother.

I wouldn't either.  And what you're saying here is a *good* reason not to
buy Dell.  In addition to the fiasco a while back where a supposed
"ATX Power Supply" had radically different connections than what
they were supposed to be.  Fortunately the system involved wasn't damaged.

 CA> I drove 150 miles back to where my desktop is at and am finishing 
 CA> the work on a REAL workstation using W2K. Laptops are 'toys' IMO 
 CA> and XP s*cks. :-\

:-)

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