Why wouldn't you? Most laptop batteries -- with the exception of some of the most recent ones that use LiPo packs, or some very rare designs using prismatic ce

Why wouldn't you? Most laptop batteries -- with the exception of some of the most recent ones that use LiPo packs, or some very rare designs using prismatic cells -- are just plastic cases built around commodity cylindrical cells. Here's a photo of the inside of a Dell: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lithium-ion-battery1.htm http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lithium-ion-battery1.ht... It's pretty trivial to build the charging circuit into the device and let the end user swap out the cells directly, but doing that gives up the obscene margins that manufacturers charge for replacement batteries, and (although I don't buy this as the actual reason) might conceivably lead to more damaged devices due to users swapping cells improperly, reversing the polarity, or mixing cell types.