I was helping my sister in-law pick out a laptop this weekend on the Dell website. Somewhere in the myriad of confusing choices, the wizard asked us to choose a battery type for the laptop. I’m not exactly sure where the line is for offering “too many choices” but this one crosses it by miles. Having no idea how to make the choice between a 80WHr 9-cell battery and a 29WHr 4-cell (besides more might be better), I asked the site to “help me choose.”

Let’s take a look at this table. Our first row has the availability of the battery by some confusing model number that I don’t recognize. So despite the fact that I’m currently in the process of configuring a laptop, the system is unable to simplify this table for me. So the first row is useless and somewhat confusing, maybe the next will be useful? Nope. I have no idea why they felt voltage was an important fact to share with their customers. I majored in Electrical Engineering and have no idea how I would factor voltage into a choice regarding a laptop battery. Next we have charge indicator and health gage, the largest and most colorful rows in the table. While this might be useful, it is certainly one of the least important factors in choosing a battery. And now that I think about it, I’m not sure what a health gauge would tell me. Is that different from charge indicator? Who knows. Maybe I missed the “help me understand” link. So mark that row as useless. Then we end with weight, both in pounds, kilograms, and “unlabeled.” Most of the batteries are within .18 pounds of each other. So I’m not sure that is a factor either. So really, the only row of any use to me is charge indicator, which is now what I’m stuck basing my entire battery decision on.

And how could I live without a charge indicator?