[W3J] Battery drain higher with the added 6-cell

A few months ago I bought a W3J. A very good notebook, and I am very happy with it. Just after purchase I bought a bigger HD (Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB) and replaced the original 100GB.

Just before going on holiday I received a second 6-cell battery. We went on a 12 hour flight and I was wondering on that flight why the notebook just lasted 3:45 hours with both batteries...that I hadn't in mind
First I thought it was the new HD draining the batteries faster, but now at home I did some tests with the original HD, the new HD and the 4 cell battery, 6 cell battery and 8 cell battery. And it isn't the new HD, but the combination 4/6 or 4/8 cells. Then the notebook is draining 28 Watts, and with just one battery and similar conditions, that's 21 Watt's! Well, that makes a huge difference for battery life.

Anyone have a clue? Or similar experiences?

 

This is counterintuitive.

You could try removing the old battery and running only with the modular bay (if possible), see if the problem goes away.

It might be that the BIOS/motherboard does not "talk" properly with the combination of these two batteries.

 

I tried running on the bay 6-cell battery only. The power drain in that situation is also 21 Watts, the same as with the one normal 4 or 8 cell battery. Indeed it is the combination of two batteries draining more Watts.

 

I have no idea what you could do to fix this... other than the obvious solution of keeping the main battery out until the modular is drained (or the other way around).

You could also RMA the modular battery, maybe it's a fault with it (but there is some chance that it isn't and it will do the same with the new one).

 

Interesting do you use the power4gear settings? That can make a huge difference, also with the new Bios it turns on Bluetooth everytime you resume or restart the laptop, so always check the Bluetooth that will save you 3-4 watts, also check you have your ATI Powerplay enabled.

For a comparison I have a W3J with twin Seagate 160gb 5400.3 drives (one in the travelers drawer) and I just upgraded my processor to a 2.33ghz Duocore2 processor, with battery saving mode on Wifi off and Blutooth off I hover around the 21watt powerdrain which get me well over 3 hours a battery.

If I crank everything up the the max that can escillate to 50 watts!! Which can quickly half that time. So it really depends what you are doing, if you are encoding audio and video with the processor cranking away with your screen on full brightness, don’t expect much battey time at all.

BUT BUT BUT ……..I just read you post again and noticed do you mean the main and multibay battery?

Looks at the results!! I have one battery at a time and the power drain is lower than with both inserted at the same time????

Main battery only 18-20 watts
Both batteries 23-24 watts
Multibay battery 17-18 watts

It seems more power available the higher the power drain?

Funny thing is the smaller capacity Multibay battery draws lass power?? Which to me seams utter nonsense to me???

Interesting, I might actually time it and see if there is any difference in running one battery at a time or both, all i know is I have used a Dell Latitude with the same setup and when you inserted both batteries they joined together and drained in series and bot batteries together lasted way longer than both individually, where as the Asus drains one completely and then drains the other, maybe its just a way they connect when both are plugged in?? who knows.

 

This is exactly what I mean. Well I haven't measured a difference between the multibay only and the 8-cell only, but the differende between ONE battery and TWO batteries is really obvious...

 

Where are you getting this drain calculation from? I've found that NHC doesn't deal with multiple batteries very well...

As far as power draw, I can tell you that the V1 drains the modular battery completely first before even touching the primary battery. Unless it's pulling power from both at the same time (which it should not), I don't see how that's possible. You could check the battery meters as you use it.

The Power4Gear theory is also possible, if it's running at high rate.

My Z63A can do about 3 hours on the primary battery, 4 if I turn off WiFi and make sure that the brightness is low.

Also, the W3J has a graphics card which undoubtably devours batteries. How much runtime do you usually get with just the one battery? Also, is that with the same brightness level?

 

Well funny thing is I thought maybe if the main battery was slightly flat, maybe it would take charge from the second battery, draining more power, butI just fully charged and inserted, it went from 18 wats to 25?? go figure.

I have batter only mode, screen two notches of lowest, wifi and bluetooth off ATI powerplay on, normally get 3.5hrs.

I use Mobliemeter, Although I do tend to think it is a metering problem rather than a battery problem,

Interesting though when you insert both batteries, your battery miser only shows the time left for the second battery 2.5hrs, in the Dell when you inserted both batteries it showed total time, like up to 7 hrs.

Mind you when I have used it, with both batteries it normally lasts for 5.5-6 hrs, im flying to Kazakhstan on Saturday, so will keep an eye and see what times i get.

 

I am using Mobile Meter too. And it is not a faulty metering I think, the batteries are really faster discharged.

Tomorrow I will try more things. I am going on holiday (with W3J off course ) so I don't know when to respond

 

Well mobile meter is reliable in my experience.

But of course one should also correlate this with a true discharge time, a difference of 20-30% should be really obvious in the true discharge time of both batteries.

But I was under the impression that the OP already did that -- in fact, the too short battery life led him to check things like discharge rate.

So it seems there is a true problem here... Might indeed be related to power profiles for some reason, please use CPU-Z or RMClock to verify that your CPU is not clocking up on idle when both batteries are inserted.

 

I am having the exact same issue. I was wondering if anyone had found a fix.
My battery drain idle is 18 with 1 battery and 26 with 2...

I can confirm it has nothing to do with clocking up, as i disable throttling on my processor anyway.

When the first battery is completly drained, i think it dropped slightly, though still not to the level of just one, and im not sure, as my methods are less than scientific

 

I would like to know a little bit more about this. What is the average life with both batteries? Is there really a problem here? Thanks for any additional information on this.

 

Wow and I thought I was the only one who had this problem. Ok guys, I have some reasonable amount of testing on my V1JP.

Setting for Battery Profile.
Screen Brightness 2/16
CPU Clocked at 1.2Ghz
Power Play at Max Battery
WIFI ON
Bluetooth OFF
Typing Document and Web browsing.

Using Mobile Meter to get discharge rate. (I do find it accurate with my battery life tests)

For example, I use these settings for school, and home use when I'm on my battery.

Battery Life Tests:

1) Main battery, 8 cell, brand new, no wear %.
I would get 3 hours straight. (+ or - 10 minutes)
Discharge rate on average is 25 watts.

2) Multi-bay battery, 6 cell, 6 months old, 1% wear.
I would get roughly 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Discharge rate on average is 23 watts.

3) Main battery + Multi-bay battery in the laptop at the same time. (follow it in order)
a. Battery Miser states just barely 4 hours.
b. Mobile Meter states the discharge rate is 28-30 watts!!
c. The multi-bay battery would last roughly 1 hour (+ or - 10 minutes)
d. Upon completely discharging the Multi-bay battery (which is completed first)
e. The battery miser reports 3 hours of battery life, with the main.
f. While Mobile Meter now states a discharge rate of 25 watts for the Main battery.

Notes

As you can see there is a problem, and I believe once again, the ACPI/BIOS or something is the cause for this too.

Aside from that I am still running ALL STOCK DRIVERS, I haven't updated my BIOS, mainly since it wouldn't take a new BIOS. Oh well.

Just a note however, as many remember I had 92% wear on my old main battery. I also had my Multi-bay battery. From my memory my discharge rate with my worn main battery and new multi-bay battery was roughly 25 watts.

This is how I concluded that, by having both batteries in, I would be able to easily attain 4 hours and 30 minutes. But I could never do it because of the amount of wear.

Now I certainly can't do it with my discharge rate being 28-30, and sometimes even 33 watts for doing the same tasks as mentioned above.

The Role of Temperatures

I have been monitoring the effects of temps and battery life, and found out that, the reason why ASUS products have such low battery life is because of the darn HEAT!

Most, if not all Asus products only have 1 Vent, (we need 2) and on top of that, more than half of their products have dedicated GPUs, which cause all this heat.

So what's the deal? Basically, because of the temps being so high (even what we consider normal), the FAN inside has to run more, which consumes up to 5 watts!

You must be wondering how do I know this? I have tested this with remarkable results.

I took my V1JP outside one Winter morning, since I was waiting for friends to play hockey with. I was monitoring my temps and battery life and notice my discharge rate with the same settings above, was averaging 20-22 watts!!

WOW! That's very good, if you didn't know the MBP discharges according my calculations on average 18-20 watts, with the same specs as my V1JP. (last generate of MBP).

So the temps are a problem with ASUS notebooks, which cause lower battery life. I say ASUS should open a MBP or LG S1 and just copy their cooling system, this should get us roughly another 30 minutes of battery life, if not more. (provided this is do-able).

Conclusion
As you can see having both Main battery and Multi-bay battery inside the laptop consumes more watts, than running each battery individually, for no apparent reason.

I have tested temps at regular room temperature and in cold temperatures and noticed a big difference. I have also monitored temps with having both batteries in the laptop, and the temps are fine, no noticeable increase in temps to cause the increase in discharge rate.

Once again, I am going to blame the ACPI/BIOS (bad coding or something), just like the Asus battery wear problem that several Merom notebooks are experiencing.

(Maybe this should be my next article)

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Have poeple tested this across several different BIOS versions on different computer?

 

I have the latest non vista bios in my W3J (W3JAS.210), I was away for the weekend with no power and 3 batteries, both main battery and multi bay battery does increase the power drain, now when use the Multi bay battery I simply remove the main battery, would you believe doing this with a 2.33ghz T7600 the drain using mobilmeter was down to 15watts at idle! on power saving mode.

it seems the more power supplied increases the powerdrain

Both batteries 28+watts
Main battery only 20+w
Multibay battery 15+w

I see no logical reason for this apart from they way the batteries are connected when plugged into the laptop.

The same setup in a Dell latitude when you have both main and multibay battery inserted battery miser shows a combined time of up to 7 hrs both batteries run down together.

Where in the asus the batteries are shown seperately and the time is shown for the multi bay battery first and when that is run down completely it switches to the second battry and runs that flat.

so with both batteries fully charged it shows only 3:27 @ 24w
main battery only shows 2:58 @ 18w
Multibay battery 1:56 @ 16w

Surely with both batteries it should show at least 4:54???

I just dont get it??????

 

It also seems that when the media bay battery is empty, it stops having the effect, meaning that this only means that we are getting less than we might have hoped for from the media bay battery

 

Have people actually timed the difference? Maybe it is just a communication error? I hope, I am supposed to be getting a W3j in a few days.

 

getting a w3j now? ...odd. I get about 4 hours of real use (music and the like) with the extra battery. Not precise, but not gonna time it precisley

 

Not so odd considering I would take a W3j or a worthless V6j.

 

Well, here is what I have found on my W3j. Single main battery yields a usable 3.5 hours (pretty consistently, with screen turned down, Wi-Fi off, and powerplay on). The second battery shows up as 37% of the total. It lasted for 1 hour and 45 min, with Wi-Fi on for half of it, and amost an hour using a Wacom tablet (increases power usage). The main battery after ran 45 min, ending at 75%, so, that means my total time was about (4*45min = 3hours) 4 hours 45 min. With Wi-Fi off, just over 5 (guess), and no Wacom I might get to 5.5 hours. That is more than enough for me, and I would be completely happy with that.

This seems a little odd now, though. 3600Mah for the optical battery and 4800 Mah for the main battery means that the optical is 75% as much as the main battery. If you find the total amount of power then divide by the optical bay batter, you get that the optical battery should be 43% of the total, Windows says 37%. Maybe its insignificant, but just pointing it out.

 

Let me "reopen" this thread.

Another user here that is experiencing higher power usage with two batteries running at once.

I have a bit older model thou but still... My laptop is M6N.

Right now I am testing "real world" preformance with each of the battery and then I will use my superior math skills and logic to combine both times and get the time that should be there when using both together

Then I all also test that...

And I will report it back to you.

Anyway..is there perhaps a know sollution to this problem or at least why is this happening?

 

I know I'm no electrical engineer (yet), but I did some math on my batteries a while back, then did some math based on my usage, and I get that there is nothing wrong with the W3j at all. Battery life is 5-5.5 hours with both batteries for me, I find that to be enough.

 

If so, then the reported power draw (larger with both batteries) is incorrect? I mean, if the batt life with both batteries is, as expected, the sum of the batt lives of the two separate batteries.

 

Again, I am not entirely sure. What I am pretty sure of is that this is a bit overblown. When i did the math, my batteries were both within a few % of what they should have been.

 

Caleb, yes..the 5hours would be enough -or shall I rather say as expected, but i did not yet test it in a real life test. Today when I went into my office I had both batteries full and the power meter was showing only 4 hours available time. I know that I checked the power usage with NHM and Everest and both were showing 25W of usage. For example...with 2nd battery now I only get 18W, the same is with my 1st battery...

Perhaps this is just a bad code from m$, but I will find out soon enough

 

Well, b|lly, you should probably do what you said in your earlier post -- test real-life performance w/ the two batts separately and then together.

If it's fine, then probably the 25W power draw is incorrect (25 to 18 is more than a few percent, should show up in the real-life test).

Instead of bad code from Microsoft, I would bet on bad code from ASUS

 

Everything is OK

Real life performance with 2 batts gave me 4h45mins with screen to max and wifi all the time. Doing office work and using internet pages all the time.

I guess its m$ or asus fault for bad coding

Now lets just see how long does it take to charge both batts at once.