Battery-Charging Not Included

After I posted about my laptop battery not recharging, my father went to talk to the IT people at his place of employment to ask whether the Geeks at Best Buy had the right idea.

His IT people told him that the problem was probably not in my power cord; in fact, if my power cord had enough juice to allow me to run the laptop, it ought to have enough juice to charge the battery. (This is what I told the Geek; S. can verify. I'm not a CS person, but I do have a fair command of logic.)

The IT people said that the problem was probably in the computer's motherboard, which would cost more to replace than the laptop itself.

Hmmm. Before I start proposing solutions (and before I turn to the "IT back office for the world" for advice), I want to take a brief moment to comment on batteries.

Not a single piece of electronic equipment I own can hold a charge. My cellphone must be fully recharged after every two phone calls. I have worn out *two* cellphone rechargers in two years from recharging my phone so often. Perhaps I should get a new phone -- but getting a new recharger and carrying it with me in my purse is so much cheaper.

Not to mention that the problem is nowhere near isolated. I received a digital camera for a Christmas present in 2004. My parents included a battery charger as well.

The batteries that came with the phone lasted for about two months (or 50-odd pictures) before needing to be recharged. So I popped them into the charger. Immediately their working capacity was more than halved. For a while I could get about ten shots off of the camera before the batteries died; now it's fewer than five. Because the recharger is cumbersome, I don't often bother taking the camera outside of the apartment, and so (except for my food pictures) it's rather like not having a camera at all.

And the battery on my laptop (or the motherboard -- a more unnerving thought) stopped recharging one year after I purchased the laptop. (Right after the warranty expired, of course. ^__^) My laptop became a desktop for over a year until I finally had enough disposable cash to purchase the new battery (cash that seems, at this point, wasted).

For a while I floated around the theory that the problem had something to do with me -- not that I was abusing my electronics (because I don't! honest!) but that I was somehow absorbing the battery power of everything around me. Like, you know, one of those Indigo Kids. ("My giant intelligence attracts all the batteries around me and uses them to power my brain!")

But the other thing I use every day that requires a battery (which shall remain nameless, for knock-on-wood purposes) has never experienced such failure. Which renders the "I'm magic" theory moot.

Now that I've finished my rant, I have two questions:

1. What do y'all think? Is it the motherboard after all?

2. If "everything is cheaper in India," should I buy my next laptop there?