One of our readers sent me a question recently, asking why his Dell Inspiron 1000 Battery won’t keep charge. The laptop works OK, when plugged in, but as soon as the cord is pulled out, the laptop would immediately switch off.

There may be several reasons of this phenomenon:

One of the most obvious, and the saddest one, is that your battery has died due to some reason (the list may include wrong charging, dropping the battery or some others). Any battery must be conditioned (fully charged and discharged) at least once in a few weeks. This helps to train the battery to provide it long life. If you always work with your battery charger plugged in all the time, and never let your battery discharge, eventually it’ll stop keeping charge at all. Proper charge/discharge practice is vitally important for long life of not only laptop batteries, but all batteries in general.

It’s useful to learn which type of battery is used in your notebook (though they are predominantly Li-Ion nowadays) and charge them according to recommendations.

If your laptop is new, and it’s still under warranty, you may consult the customer service of the company which sold you the laptop and ask to find out what causes the problem.

Faulty adapter may be one more possible source of trouble. If there are some problems with the wires in the adapter, voltage steps are possible, which may cause great damage to the laptop, so check your adapter and buy a new Dell Inspiron 1000 Adapter it if needed.