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    Windows 7 and reduced Timeline battery

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by JimmyJ, Dec 22, 2009.

  1. JimmyJ

    JimmyJ Notebook Consultant

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    Hello all,

    On my 4810TZ with Vista I was easily getting 8-9 hrs of battery life, but once after installing Windows 7 its hardly 6 hrs. I have installed the latest ePower Management, Optical Power Manaement softwares. The drivers are the latest for the Windows 7. I have not updated my BIOS, a little reserved about that. The display is at minimum brigtness, the Optical drive is truned off, so is the WiFi and bluetooth, but still just near 6 hrs. How about you all, any idea what may be the issue.

    Thanks
    Jimmy
     
    JimmyJ, Dec 22, 2009
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  2. n0elia

    n0elia Come on Haswell...

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    I think 6 hours is ok, I get around 6-8 depending on what I'm doing... 8 with WIFI turned off.

    Hopefully SP1 for Win7 will increase battery life!
     
    n0elia, Dec 22, 2009
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  3. JimmyJ

    JimmyJ Notebook Consultant

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    I guess you are really lucky, it hardly reaches 6 for me, Now the other thing I noticed the the battery meter seems to be more inconsistent, the time remaining varies by more than hour even when there is hardly any activity performed.
     
    JimmyJ, Dec 23, 2009
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  4. JimmyJ

    JimmyJ Notebook Consultant

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    Just wanted to let everyone know that the issue seems resolved for now, with my battery meter showing numbers that me happy. The battery meter shows more than 8 hours of battery for simple tasks.

    I am not exactly sure what did the trick, but I guess it would be either one of the two.

    1. Win 7 updates.
    2. Win 7/Acer software has a self learning capacity.

    The only thing I noticed is, any change in the power usage takes 5 min to reflect on the battery meter.

    When I put the system on Power Saver mode and then switched the screen off and later switched it on, it for a moment showed me 15hrs.

    Now this is what the battery meter shows.

    Is there any load testing software which could simulate the usage so that we could test the machine to see how long the battery really lasts. I really can't keep doing the same activities for 6-8 hrs, really
     
    JimmyJ, Dec 27, 2009
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  5. hardc0re

    hardc0re Notebook Guru

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    You don't have a Timeline with the ATI switchable graphics, so what you saw was probably just the usual Windows background services taking time to 'settle in'. On a fresh install of W7 or Vista, for the first few hours / days, lots of background services are running like System Restore, Indexing, etc. which cause a lot of disk activity. W7 handles this better than Vista in that it doesn't affect the user experience much, but you can still see the HDD working.

    After these tasks are done, W7 should have slightly better battery life than Vista, which does have better battery life than XP.
     
    hardc0re, Dec 28, 2009
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