>> Well, every laptop *I* have seen, the battery loses the ability to 
>> recharge after a few months, maybe a year.
> 
> Never seen that here, and all the people in my department use laptops a 
> lot. I have seen two laptops with dead batteries, they were at least 3 
> years old and we just got new batteries for them.

Heh. *My* laptop came from PC World, so it had a 6 month warranty 
instead of the usual 12 months. Also, if you want support, you *must* 
get it through PC World. (If it had been bought anywhere else, we would 
have got it direct from the manufacturers.)

Also, it apparently took my mum many, many months to find a replacement 
battery. Apparently she had to buy an exorbitant sum to have one shipped 
over from Korea specially. (Or at least, this is what she told me...)

>> I've got, like, 4 laptops on my office floor here that all behave this 
>> way.
> 
> How old are they and what brand?  If they really are only 4 months old 
> then just ask for a free replacement.

All different versions of Acer TravelMate. None of them are young any 
more. (Maybe 2, 3 years old?) A few of them will run on battery power 
for, like, 20 minutes. But none are very reliable. Apparently they were 
when new.

>> My dad has problems to this day with computers randomly dropping their 
>> network connections or just plain not seeing the WiFi router at all. 
>> To the point that he's lifting floorboards to run cables round the 
>> building to make his gear actually ****ing work properly.
> 
> Hmm maybe bad/cheap access point/network card/drivers?  I have 3 
> machines running at home over wireless continuously with no problems, in 
> addition even my phone, PS3 and Wii connect to it!  At work it's the 
> same, no problems.  I guess buying an access point and NIC from the same 
> company might help?  Dunno, should be a solvable problem, it's not like 
> nobody can get a wireless network to work correctly.

My dad bought a Belkin WiFi router which comes with a free Belkin WiFi 
adaptor for your PC. In other words, the entire rig is same-brand - and 
a pricey brand at that! But no, he had endless problems with it.

Actually, he bought a cheap "there isn't even a brand on the box" WiFi 
adaptor from Maplin, and it worked much better than the supplied Belkin 
one. But even so, if you move too far away from the router... no signal. 
(Or rather, intermittent signal. Some days it's fine. Some days it won't 
work for toffee.)

>> Plus, AFAIK, WiFi is currently much slower than Ethernet.
> 
> About half the speed, but your internet connection will probably be the 
> bottleneck.

Well, that's true enough...

BTW, is WiFi faster or slower than Bluetooth? Every time I have to use 
that thing, I'm struck by how utterly low it is. (10 minutes to transfer 
a few KB??)

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