Where do I find the read out of cycles on my battery & it's battery life?

Question

Battery won't charge, MBP won't run on AC, MagSafe light out or flickering, no green or orange or amber light - those were the descriptions of my problem.
First of all I want to shout out a huge THANKS to people who contribute to this discussion board. My computers just aged out of their APP and I was dreading the thought and expense of putting my MBP into a repair shop. It took me a bit of reading and trying out suggestions but I was able to track down the root of my problem by using the search function before posting. That was a bit tricky since I didn't find anyone who posted or phrased the problem the way I was experiencing it, but through the process of elimination I was able to rule out a bad Left I/O board (yippee) and that it was merely a dead battery.
I was monitoring the draining of my battery as I used it with the power cord. It was getting critically low. I was pointed to the instructions to close and save all open applications then put the computer through sleep, restart and shut down. I also took out the battery and did the 5 second hold on the power button before starting up. I also had just enough battery power to send the critical document I was working on to my iDisk account so I could finish it on my Mac Pro if all else failed. Some of those are just common sense measures but when I'm in a state of near panic (working on taxes - urgh!) I'm glad someone else took the time to point out the obvious.
S.U. posted this link and it was the clincher:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1713
When I saw the photo of what the MagSafe pegs were supposed to look like I discovered that one was retracted and I could not get it dislodged. I bought a new MagSafe connector and I'm back in business.
I'm sorry I didn't keep track of each person's ID who helped me through the deduction process. I also want to thank the person who pointed me to iFixit.com. I've bookmarked that fine site for future endeavors in home diagnosing and fixing.
What I still need answered is where do I go on my computer to get the read out on how many cycles I've used on charging my battery and the other information that I saw people copy and paste about their battery life? I know my battery is on the downhill side so I'd like to start monitoring it.
I'm also posting my whole problem for the possibility that someone will have a similar way of describing their dilemma and be able to search here for a possible solution.
These discussion boards have saved my bacon many times.

Answer 1

You can see number of charging cycles in System Profiler , under Power.
In regards to your battery/charger issues one thing - try to switch your computer off, take the battery out, and hold power button for 5 (10, just for a sake of it seconds.
Then put battery back in, and try to charge it/power it up. It's amazing how many issues can this solve...
Let us know!