Using a Toshiba laptop without the battery [duplicate]

My Toshiba laptop battery is just about dead.

Can I continue to use the laptop without the battery in the unit at all? Will it harm the laptop in the long run?

Solution 1:

You can continue to use the laptop without the battery with no harm to the laptop, though you will need to be careful around power outages, because the system will crash when it loses power just as a desktop would, which can lead to corrupt or unsaved files being lost (again, just like a desktop). You will have to keep the laptop plugged in at all times, and will have to hibernate or shut down the laptop to unplug it (sleeping it will not work).

Solution 2:

Try doing a stress test first. Set the computer into high performance mode and run Prime95 for a while or a demanding game.

Stories tell that there are poorly designed laptops that actually rely on battery power in cases where the external power supply can't provide enough power. If you are unfortunate owner of such laptop, you'll have to replace the battery.

Do note that usually power supplies are strong enough to power laptop under full load and charge the battery at the same time, but by testing you'll be able to avoid problems later.