03:30 PM: Garrett stopped by to pick up his machine. He checked it our and was very pleased with how much better it’s performing now, thanking me profusely.

For payment, Garrett owes me three trips to Altoona, the first of which we’ll do this coming Sunday, when we pick up [Emmy] at the train station.

07:25 PM: Vista is downloading and installing the latest updates currently. This could take some time to finish. Stand by.

11:20 PM: About 49 of the 96 outstanding updates have installed at this point. The rest should complete overnight; I’ll just leave the laptop running.

03:45 PM: I’ve determined today that the battery does indeed charge; though it doesn’t last but an hour per charge. Garrett explained that he keeps the machine set on “high performance” mode, which drains the battery considerably faster than the other, more conservative performance settings. Still though, it did charge, which likely rules out the charger and the internal electronics in the computer as possible problems. Also, we were unable to duplicate the message he received one time, telling him that the battery could not be charged.

04:15 PM: My suggestion: Reformat the drive and install only the programs he actually uses. The programs on there right now keep the CPU at around 60% busy, and occupy the hard drive almost constantly. So he’s got something screwy on that computer. Reformatting will clear all of that.

04:30 PM: We went through all his installed programs and he indicated which ones he wanted and which I should not install after the reformat. I encouraged him not to reinstall the Dell tools as well as the Verizon security suite since he indicated that he began having problems after installing Verizon software. However, his family pays for a subscription for this. So he’ll probably end up installing it again. I recommended the Avast anti-virus software instead because in my experience, it works well and its resource footprint seems quite small; I’ve experienced very little performance degradation with Avast. But we’ll see what program he wishes to use.

09:20 PM: I just tried to check battery status and the computer locked up when I touched the mouse to turn off the screen saver and display the desk top once again. I rebooted. Not a good sign though. I’d say he probably has some software on the computer that’s hogging resources.

09:32 PM: Well, after ten minutes, I finally could read the battery level indicator; It says 87%. So the computer at least, thinks that the battery is in fact charging. Indeed, the power supply is quite warm to the touch, and so is the battery. Once it’s fully charged, I’ll unplug the AC power and see how long it runs before depleting the battery.

I’m going to recommend that we completely reformat Garrett’s machine; it has some “bloatware” that he probably does not need.

11:20 PM: The computer reports that the battery is fully charged. Tomorrow, I’ll run the laptop on battery power and see how long it lasts. This will be the acid test of how effectively the battery charges.