yes you need to get the battery charged before doing anything.
i did this at VZW and they also didnt mind.
if your battery dies and you have no way of charging it take it into best buy i told them what happened and they were happy to charge my battery using one of their droids while i looked around for about an hour.
as for RSDlite not recognizing your phone I had that problem for days then i tried installing the droid x drivers then restarted my pc and boom there it was.
hope this helps
i did this at VZW and they also didnt mind.