Acer 5820T issues (URGENT HELP NEEDED)

Hi,
I've owned 5820T for about a month now, and I'm experiencing some
problems that I cannot fix.

1) Audio problems
-I've learned from other threads that many 5820T/TG owners are aware of this issue. There is noise coming from the left speaker while listening to music.

-Also, this is a more serious problem to me. I mainly use mozilla firefox as my internet browser, and whenever I have too many tabs/windows of firefox running, the videos (downloaded ones) don't have any audio. It's only shows the picture. After several experiments, I've learned that it isn't an issue associated with firefox or the media player I use. When I reduce the number of tabs/windows of internet browser to about three or so, the sound comes back (I have to exit the media player and play it again).

-Whenever I have a music player running, I don't get any audio from videos (both downloaded and online ones such as youtube). In order to get sound, I have to exit the music player (pausing or stopping music doens't work). Again, this isn't a problem associated with the music player I use (tried with several music + media players).

In an attempt to fix these audio problems, I've removed and reinstalled realtek audio codec from Acer website but to no avail.

2) General performance speed
-It is hard to believe that this is a month old laptop judging from the performance I get. My laptop is equipped with i3 processor, 4 gb ram, and 5400 rpm hdd. I know these specs aren't anything superb, but I'm sure this is enough to satiate my needs (surfing internet, watching videos, listening to music, and no game of any kind). I get ratings of 6.3 and 5.9 from Windows Experience Index for processor and memory. However, at this very moment I'm writing this post, I can feel it lagging. When I'm typing, it isn't exactly being written as smoothly as it should. About every five words I write, it freezes temporarily and writes belatedly. Although I have more than ten tabs running right now on this browser, this is the only program that is running right now. Compared with my 3 year-old sony vaio, I can say that this laptop is MUCH slower. It is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY frustrating. This computer struggles to carry out the most basic of the tasks!

-I have installed minimum number of programs to suit my need, which include mozilla fox, google chrome, dc++, itunes, another music player, adobe, winrar, and two media players. These are the only programs I installed since I got this laptop! (just went through the program list).

-This is more of a question than an issue. Windows Task Manager shows that I have around 100 processes running at the moment. Is that normal or excessive? I haven't gotten a chance to format this computer because I don't have an external optical drive.

3) Battery Life
-One of the things I looked forward in this laptop was Acer's boasted 8 Hour battery life. Ok, I didn't exactly expect to get full 8 hours because I'm not that naive and clueless. But I expected it to give at least 6 hours, a 25% drop from the advertised battery life. However, the very first battery running time I got was 4 hours (dimmed the light to darkest setting, muted audio, and plainly surfed the web). I keep my laptop plugged in most of the time, with battery off. Nowadays, after a month, I'm getting a little over than 2 hours from my battery. I promptly take off the battery once it is fully charged to prevent overcharging. And I've only used battery around 8 times or so up to this point.




These three problems are the ones I can scrape from top of my head right now. I can't think of other problems, but I don't think there is any more significant ones as listed above. I'm not sure if I got an especially faulty laptop, but it is very disappointing overall. I don't play games on my laptop, and use it mainly to watch videos, listen to music, and surf on the web. The most I do is have music playing in the back while opening 20 (max) tabs on mozilla firefox.

Please, if you've experienced or are currently experiencing these problems, share with me and help me ultimately to get rid of all of these problems.
Thank you.

 

100 processes is way too much.

Battery life is way too low.

Do a 100% clean install and report back to us. Install only necessary drivers and programs.

Why would you need an external optical drive if you have one built in?

FWIW I read about the audio problem on this forum. Don't remember where exactly but it was the same issue... after 4 tabs, the audio would go out. Don't think they found a fix for that in the thread i read.

 

Try the most recent drivers from Realtek website.
Around 100 processes id too much- I could understand 60 if you run a lot of stuff but I'm at 40-43 right now.
What's the CPU usage? Is the HDD in constant use?
Check if your profile is not set at power saving and/or is edited to limit the speed of the CPU.
Do you use an anti-virus software? If not I'd recommend installing something- it may be free- Microsoft Security Essentials is considered good.
Low battery life may be an effect of something else like high resource utilization so let's leave it for now and concentrate on the above first.