AK's dashboard

I may be wrong, but I think you mean Watts (power) instead of Hertz (frequency). And in that case, it's not so much a matter of a lower wattage powering the battery at all. Having a 50-60W charger as opposed to a 65W charger would only have a slightly slower charge time for your battery. Think of it this way: a charger with less power will still charge your battery, but it will just do it in less time. And actually, having a charger that emits less power can be good, because the metals will not heat up as much and your battery will likely last longer.

I'm not saying that your battery charged with the 65-watt adapter, and that may very well be the solution that works for you. But based on my experience with electricity, that should only be a temporary solution.

What I ultimately found was that my motherboard had completely died (which I am told is nearly to impossible to replace, yourself). When I went to take out the hard drive recently, I found that something had created a spark near the hard drive bay which landed on the heatsink (that, or the heatsink actually started turning black close to some exposed copper wires near a circuit, which I suppose is my motherboard).

I remain skeptical of Dell's disposition of the matter. It has been roughly a year and countless others have experienced the same issues (as you can see by the sheer volume of replies in this thread as well as many others) with their batteries, motherboards, adapters, graphics cards, etc.

A few months ago, I went on Dell's website in a mock attempt to purchase an XPS laptop similar to the M1330. I have been told that Dell's batteries are covered under a different warranty from the laptop (which is 1 year from the date they are made). I thoroughly read every piece of information on every page as I went through the purchase process, and nowhere did I see anything that stated their batteries operate under a different warranty than their laptops. They need to stand up for the defects that come with their products. If they did, I would have more readily suggested Dell products to my friends and family, but I am adamantly opposed to Dell. I honestly cannot believe this many people have replied to this thread (just think about how many don't even know about this website or care less to register!) yet Dell sits and does nothing. It truly is a sad day when we fork over $1000+ for a laptop only to use it for a year. The real sad part is that I had many crucial documents for school and work on that laptop which has cost me money in the short-run and the long-run. – AK, on October 20, 2009 16:01

Someone actually bought a universal adapter and let me use it. In a nutshell, the replacement adapter worked fine. It charged the battery and it has continued to charge. However, I won't mention specific brands here so that I'm not held for libel, but the adapter I've used has had some major issues since the purchase (so read reviews before you buy!).

Conclusion:
I will agree with reidjosh here: I recommend against buying the Dell AC adapter because you run into problems again. When shopping carefully and reading reviews first, you can likely find an AC adapter that works well with your Dell.

If Dell would finally admit that there are major malfunctioning issues with their laptops, and service those who purchased their products that are no longer under warranty, I wouldn't have much of a problem. However, their shady and inexorable stance on issues such as this will continue to dissuade other potential customers. I usually do not like to dissuade others against electronic products (mostly because there are fragile and numerous components to electronics such as laptops where a vast array of problems can occur), but I will vehemently continue to inform my friends that Dell operates under such pretenses as this.

I could sincerely understand if these were isolated issues, however you can look anywhere online and find that Dell XPS laptops have motherboard, nvidia card, and AC adapter issues, many of which are interrelated. One only needs to go as far as this website to view such issues with Dell laptops, this being one of the primary issues.

Just an update for any Dell associates, the Dell charger is no longer even maintaining a constant battery percentage. The charger is no longer recognized, and the battery is draining when the charger is plugged in.

Any help would be greatly appreciated because this is a much more serious problem now for me!

I also wanted to let you know that the screen will sometimes turn to pure white and then shut off. It happens seemingly randomly, no matter what I am doing. I've heard there is also a display driver issue as well as a motherboard issue with the M1330's. But I've never heard of the screen turning white and then shutting off by itself.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help!