ASUS N61 Series Owners .. vote for 8-cell battery please

Hey all,
I have been using the N61jq for three months so far
its great .. every thing is excellent for me so far

ONLY the Battery is the problem

so .. i was thinking if we can make a vote .. and encourage ASUS to make an 8-cell battery for us

like the U series .. some has i5 processor and dedicated high-end video card
and it has the 8-cell 5600mAh battery which supports up to 6 hours of normal use

how does it sound .. seems crazy to me

 

I'd vote for it as well as buy it.

Anything at 3 hours+ is great for me.

 

I'm all in on that vote!!! The problem is the sunken hinge design. They would have to design a battery just for this model unless they continue to use this hinge on other models. But if you tell me where I can vote for this I will vote early and often. Lets get er done Asus!

 

Yasser_Ahmad, I'm with you man, let's get the campaign going !*!

 

This needs to happen.

 

So where do we go from here? I'm sure we can get everyone on NBR who owns the notebook or is planning to buy one to vote for this.

Yasser?

 

Guys .. sorry for late reply

actually i know nothing about what to do

should any1 of the retailers contact ASUS for that
like GenTechPC or Paladin44 .. ?

i'm from Egypt .. i have no ASUS company here
mabe ppl in the USA can help

i logged onto the ASUS member site and sent a msg about that
lets wait for reply ..

any other ideas ?

 

Yasser, Welcome to our Forums.
All the N61 owners feel your pain on the battery. But unfortunatly it is something you just have to learn to live with on this model. We have had retailers look into this and what they have come back with is it is not going to happen. Asus extended life batteries stick out of the back of the laptop. This model has a unique hinge that is sunken to give you a better viewing angle. While this is a very nice feature it prevents using their extended life batteries because it would prevent you from opening the lid. My hope has been that they would use this hinge on future models which would force them to design a battery for it. I have not checked the newer models to see if they are using this hinge. It can't hurt to contact Asus and complain and I will post a request for all to do that on the N61JQ owners lounge.

 

Manufacturers have all shifted to playing with chemistry and polymers, along with OS/BIOS tweaks, rather than increasing the cell number to improve battery life. The major reason that Asus has essentially stopped making extended batteries is that a) they don't sell well enough to justify the production costs involved and b) they're ugly sticking out so the public won't buy the systems that show them ... witness the W7 and original U3 series. You need to sell enough product to make a profit, and extended batteries just don't generate the necessary sales volume to drive a product line.

Even if several hundred consumers from this forum all contacted Asus to raise their voices, this is a global company. Such an action may well make you all feel better, but Asus has a long history (in keeping with every other OEM manufacturer) of dismissing product requests made by a consumer minority. Long winded way of nicely suggesting that you all would be wasting your time .

 

FWIW, the 9 cell battery for my U20A was never officially sold by ASUS, but since it's shared for the U80/U50/U81, they released a BIOS update that supported it. The battery itself was extremely hard to find and I have two of them at 40% charge, wrapped in plastic in my refrigerator, that I never use. The same situation existed for the N10 model, it shared a 9 cell battery with other models and it was never officially sold by ASUS for the N10. That battery cost me half the value of the machine by the time I found one, and it was soon discontinued. If you don't share a battery with another model, it's unlikely you're going to be lucky and get an extended battery if there wasn't one in the ASUS lineup to begin with.

 

the messege i sent to ASUS

hey,

i sent a msg before about the battery problem for this laptop N61JQ
it lasts about 2 hours of normal use

i had an idea .. what about making a VOTE to get ASUS make an 8-cell Battery for the
N61 series
in that site .. forum.notebookreview.com .. there are MANY owners of the N61
so ... i asked them about this idea ..
i see all people agree .. because its the ONLY problem for that laptop
so ... how does it sound to make that battery .. and surely it will get great sales

thanks ASUS .. you are the best


and the Reply was ..


Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.

Thanks for your advice! I've passed this case to the correlative dept. Once the 8 cells battery for N61JQ are released, they'll be available in the market.

Thanks for choosing ASUS. If having any problems, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,
May
ASUS Customer Service Center

 

Boilerplate response - you cannot read into it at all ... here's a translation since we've seen this kind of reply posted around here before "Thank you for the email. I passed this along to a different department involved in system components, and should our company ever decide to make something like this we will of course sell them."

The CSR who replied clearly doesn't reflect any directly knowledge or access to information re: if 8-cells even exist or are somewhere in production/roadmap.

Sorry, kids. My original commentary points still stand. These aren't likely coming, and Asus corporate does not/has never monitored any of their product forums, even their own.

 

so ... what do YOU suggest ?

i know all what you said !!
i know it is nothing to give attention for it

so .. we are Kids .. what do you DAD suggest

 

1. Learn to accept the limitations of the products you purchase and their accessories.

2. And yet you still seemed to interpret the CSRs response as some kind of acceptance and intent to act on your request, which it really just isn't if you've ever seen these CSR replies before. I was bringing back some perspective for others who might read the thread and see the CSR response as a hopeful reply.

3. Not intended to be perjorative nor dismissive; unfortunate that you appear to have chosen to take it in that fashion. Folks need to lighten up a little.

 

1- yeah i'll try ... but i'll try the other way too .

2- no i'm not at all .. i do realize the response is nothing .

3- i was just kidding with you .. dont you see that smile ( )
you convinced me ..
but i still have a hope
i mean if ASUS guarantee that the battery will get great demand .. why won't they produce it ?

 

Because there really isn't enough demand for it. A worldwide company isn't going to begin manufacturing a double-capacity battery just because a few people request it. They didn't guarantee anything. Its basically a generic response, and I can bet that if you were to email the exact same address using a different email address then you would get a similar, generic response.

If you really do need the extra battery capacity, purchase a second battery and take them in turns charging up then have one in your lappy bag or something.

If thats too much of an inconvienance, than you can always try some tried and true methods of saving battery. Use the lowest screen brightness, kill unneccessary tasks/programs, use power4gear, etc, etc.

 

Or buy a netbook for extended periods of use without a plug and then have this machine as your multimedia center.

It's a good thing the majority of laptops have a 2-3 hour battery life. You find places compensating for this by ensuring they have enough plugs in their facility. Imagine if a place thought everyone had Macbooks. We'd all be out of power long before the class/lecture/seminar/meeting ended.