GarryP

Does it hold its charge? If so I'd ignore the message - shades of the evil of marketing, the message only appears after the warranty runs out... IIRC they consider it EoL when it can only hold 80% of its original capacity, which for most people is perfectly acceptable.

One trick you can do is to run the battery flat, all the way down to zero. Then charge it fully - that can recalibrate the monitoring and get rid of any issue.

I've had the same battery in my laptop for over 5 years - and it still works acceptably.

Oh, and BTW if you do decide to replace it, get a compatible, don't get it from Dell. Basically those batteries are normal 1.5v AA Lithium rechargeable batteries, with a nice plastic case and a few cheap components. How much would you pay for 9 AA rechargeables?

datamile

$60-80 for a 320/500gb replacement drive.

Operating system will be fun if you don't have the recovery disks from dell. Was it Vista or Win 7 ? Did my son's one a couple of months back, and the win 7 download was huge, and then you have to find the drivers etc if you don't have thoses disks. Before you start, make sure you have a windows license number, it'll be on the bottom , or under the battery.

Should be able to mount the old drive in any modern sata PC if it has standard sata drive connectors.

Some idea on replacement laptop prices

http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/notebook.pdf

http://www.onlinecomputer.com.au/index.php?cPath=1

http://shopap.lenovo.com/au/en/deals...rance-laptops/