Laptop

I bought a laptop when I started law school. It's tiny and I love it, but I hate it when things are not charged so I was constantly plugging it in to make sure the battery never died. I ruined several cell phone batteries that way before I learned what I was doing wrong (I am now working on year #2 with the same phone battery for the first time ever!). Now, supposedly lithium-ion batteries (which my laptop has) are not supposed to do this, but mine definitely took a dive due to the constant charging. It would start out fully charged and within a very short period of time (sometimes just a few minutes) it would die.

So... I pretty much haven't used my laptop for the past year or two. I pulled it out from under the bed this past week and decided I would get a new battery (now that I know how to properly care for them). I ordered a new battery and then... decided to wait for this one to die.
After about 30 minutes of using battery power, it died. I pushed the power button and was able to use it for another 10 minutes before it died again. Then I pushed the power button again and... 15-20 minutes later it's still going!!! My battery indicator has said "0%" for quite some time now, but it's still going!

I have learned:

1. Lithium-ion batteries do suffer from the "memory effect" even though the experts claim they don't and
2. NEVER order a brand-new, non-returnable battery until you are absolutely sure that your current one is really, truly irreparably damaged.