I suppose it had to happen eventually. Almost 25 months since I first laid my hands on the TF101, it appears that the battery of my tablet has given out.

How do I know? Well, I really can’t say for sure, except some interesting coincidences.

The other day, the battery was down to about 20%. I decided to turn it off to save the battery for later that day. I ended up not using it at all until I got home. At home, I faithfully plugged it in to charge it over night. Everything seemed fine…until the screen flashed and suddenly I found it to be rebooting.

Once the reboot was complete, it continue to do so until it refused to boot at all. At that point, I left it alone and plugged in over night, figuring that perhaps my charger was having issues and was only able to trickle charge. Alas, I found that regardless of how I tried and regardless of the tricks (stick the charger in the freezer, for example) it would not charge. Yesterday, I finally managed to get far enough to see that the battery graph had dropped immediately from 20% to 0% as opposed to the gradual decline typically associated with a draining battery. So, something was clearly going on. Considering that supposedly these batteries should be good for about 500 cycles, I’m clearly beyond the expected life expectancy already anyway.

Tonight, I’ll give it one more shot with a trickle charge on another charger but after that, I’m not sure if it’s worth my effort to continue. I could perhaps try a new charger but I’m hesitant to get into testing this part and that part. I’d spend more time doing that than I would buying a new one.

So, I guess now is the time to evaluate: do I need a tablet and if so, what would I get? Any suggestions?