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I am buying a new battery for an old and retired Gateway W340UA so my son can have a laptop for 5th grade. The school's BYOT rules state that they cannot charge at the school. To eliminate wear and tear on the laptop, I'd like to show him how to pop the battery (Gateway 6MSBG) out, bring only the battery home, and charge it overnight. But when I shop online for cords, I can't tell from the pictures if the cord is wired to plug directly into the battery or if it plugs into the computer. Is there a particular name for this type of charger so that I can be sure that I'm buying the right thing?

BTW, he already uses an Android tablet and I know tablets are more portable and rugged. But he needs MS Office, a keyboard, mouse, and a USB port, which puts us into the newer tablets, and I'm not willing to chance that kind of investment since his tablet's screen was cracked in the first week. Thanks in advance.

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  • In general, batteries are charged in the system, not on a separate cord or charger. There's exceptions, for example batteries in docks, but that's uncommon.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Sep 28, 2014 at 15:18
  • He's using MS Office in the 5th grade? That's both scary and embarassing.
    – fixer1234
    Sep 28, 2014 at 16:14

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Although the power brick is commonly called a "charger" it is actually just a DC power supply; the circuit that controls charging is in the laptop. So you can't just run DC from the power brick into the battery.

I haven't seen standalone chargers for any laptop model for quite a while - they used to exist but only for a few laptop models, tending to be very high-end ones.

Your best bet may be to just buy another laptop of compatible model. I see one on ebay for $70. That's actually quite a bit less than I paid for a separate charger for a Toshiba Tecra many many years ago.

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