How to charge a laptop battery?
 

How do I charge a laptop battery? Ever since I got the laptop last week, I've just been plugging it in when I use it, and I tried to put the battery on 2 nights ago, for the first time, and it said something like, there's only 1% battery life left on it, and that shocked me. I remember in the item description for the laptop, it said something about how long the battery life can go, I think I said like, 3.5 hrs maybe? What can I do about that?

Well, maybe the laptop was shipped with one of those "spacers" inside, that prevented the battery from making fully contacting the metal contacts.

Be sure the battery is completely snapped into place.

Also take it out, and check the contacts -- are they clean?

Item descriptions are notorious for "soft lies" -- what you refer to as specs that are achieved under "optimal" (i.e., UNREALISTIC!) conditions. Many laptop batteries will maybe run for an hour or two, before they start to run dead, with "full use" of the computer. Graphics cards, optical drives, CPU, hard drive -- these are all a power suck, and will shorten available minutes on the battery. The only way to get 3-4 hours is if you're basically doing nothing -- browsing the web or typing a Word doc.

And then there's always a chance the battery is dead -- and can't be recharged well (or at all).