Decreased Battery Life on 5810TG After Installing Win7 SP1?

Hi,

I first got my 5810TG in October 2010, I put Win7 on it straight away and updated all the drivers and applied all the Acer software, Launch Manager etc.
The battery life was amazing, sometimes seeing 9 hours from light use (browsing and Word).
However, recently, battery life has dimished, with a maximum of only 5 hours achievable under the same circumstance. I have tried to further update the drivers as best I can, but the drivers on Acer support are hardly current.

Has anyone noticed any difference in battery life after installing SP1 on Win7?

Any other help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Not an easy one to answer as there could be many reasons, even the battery itself.

Does W7 have the reliability monitor like Vista ? Maybe look and see if anything is using a lot of CPU capacity. Even such things as an overactive securitry package can be a big drain.

Although this was a totally diferent question it shows what can be achieved. Look at post#2 and the pic.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/539964-acer-aspire-5315-2326-vista-laptop-slowing-down.html

Other ideas... it could even be malware causing high processor use.
Is the HDD constantly being accessed for some reason ?

You need a base line to work too. You also have to determine if the battery is OK. Maybe just leave it displaying the desktop. Brightness settings can have a significant impact.

 

Did the battery performance take a hit immediately after SP1, or has it been in gradual decline ever since?

On a previous machine I had, within a year, prob 9 months or so, the battery on mine had pretty much died, would be lucky if I got 20 mins out of it on battery, they are known for dying fairly early.