Battery Information - We Desperately Need YOUR Help!

[Mods, if you find this important, please sticky it!]

Some of you may know, but for those of you who don't, there are quite a few Asus notebooks that are having battery troubles. Now, luckily for us these aren't exploding batteries, but just really weak batteries. What happens is as the battery is discharged, it becomes "worn" at an abnormally fast rate. Most batteries will last for 1-2 years before their battery life becomes noticeable smaller. Computers affected with what has come to be known as the "battery wear bug" with lose more than half of their battery life in anywhere from 2-4 months.

We need your help (even if you aren't affected). What we are looking for is people to run tests on their computer (don't worry, its as easy as watching a movie, literally) to help us compile a database of information to prove to Asus that this is a real problem that they need to fix.

If you have one of the following, you are likely affected: V6j, V1j, G1, R1, Z35
If you have any other recent (or even not so recent) Asus notebook, please help us by completing the test as well.

How to perform the test:

1. Fully charge your notebook and restart (Yes, do a full restart, don't just hibernate and restore it. This is critical to proper readings).
2. After the computer is restarted, you need to record the following information from a program such as NHC or MobileMeter (more instructions on this later). Device Name, Remaining Wattage, Designed Capacity, Fully Charged Capacity, Wear Level, and Voltage. Please also include which notebook you are using, and which battery for that notebook (number of cells).
3. Set the computer to turn off when the battery gets low. It would be ideal to see multiple runs of each of the following from each person, but we will take whatever you are able to provide for now. Test the computer going to 50% charged, or 25% charged, or until the battery forces the computer to shutoff (these are all separate tests). You can set this up by going into the power options, then setting the computer to hibernate at a certain percentage. Pick the one thats appropriate, or turn this feature off to force the computer to run until the battery is dead.
4. Now deplete the battery. You can work as usual, or run a game, a movie, or whatever you like. It shouldn't matter how you run the battery down, but for good measure please run it down in one shot (if need be just leave it on running something until it dies).
5. Recharge the battery. If possible, leave the computer off, but if you need to work, go ahead and work while its charging. Once its completely charged, completely restart the computer again, and record all of the same information from NHC or MobileMeter.

If the numbers have changed, that means there is likely battery wear happening. If they are the same, then the battery/computer should be ok. As I said, please do as many of the tests as possible, and repetitions of tests are great too.

Getting information from MobileMeter:

1. Download the program from this page: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/MobileMeter-Download-24748.html
2. Run the program. Once it is up, right click on it and click "Options".
3. Click on the "Battery Information" tab. Record the information you need.
4. You can close the program by right clicking on the program again, and selecting "Close".

Thank you very much for your help! You might have just saved yourself (or someone else) hundreds of dollars on new batteries!

P.S. If any of this isn't clear, please let me know so I can fix it. Feel free to PM me any questions you have, and post your results here so I can start compiling them all!

 

The G1 is also suspected to show the same signs of early/abnormal battery wear

 

Will do as soon as I get my V6J from RMA (which is for the battery problem, of course). Caleb: I'm not sure it's very clear from

"Test the computer going to 50% charged, 25% charged, and until the battery forces the computer to shutoff. "

that you want people to do three separate tests and record parameters after each: go down to 50%, then recharge, then reboot and check battery params; then to 25%, recharge, reboot, check parameters; then to nil, recharge, reboot, check parameters.

Or isn't that what you want? :/

I have highlighted reboot because it's necessary for Mobile Meter to update its stats. So, you need to reboot after every cycle you make to force Windows to read updated stats.

 

Just to help clarify with part 2.

Step 2: Use Everest or Mobile Meter to get the following informaiton

• Wattage
• Designed Capacity
• Fully Charged Capacity
• Current Capacity
• Voltage
• Wear Level
• Battery Specs (Voltage, mah, Cells, Whr) [Can be found on the battery itself]

Here's an image of this:


I would like to partake in the affected category of this on going investigation.
I will also be talking with the service center here in Ontario, Canada to see what they can do or say.
Lastly the modular bay battery is now available, I think, so I will also be studying that battery upon arrival and see what happens.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Here's how it looks with MobileMeter. I've circled the interesting quantities in red.

 

How is that? Anything else to fix?

 

Important, yes, but I clearly see wayyyy too many stickies, a few will be going down, but just keep this thread in 1st page should be enough.

I'll post mines when I get the time, and when I'm not in a class lab(like right now )

 

Understandable. Thanks for chipping in and helping out.

 

I'm just testing mine for you - it's a 6 week old G1 and it was showing 4% wear at the start, it takes over 3 hours to wear the battery out in normal office conditions though so this might take a while....

 

No issues whatsoever with Z33 9-cell - has been steady at 7-9% wear for the last 6 months. Discharged to varying levels on a daily basis. Battery is 12 months old this week.

3-cell at 14%, but it has been allowed to sit for a long period of time at low charge by mistake. No rapid degradation. Also 12 months old.

 

Ermmm....

I ran the test and let it drain the whole way down, but now for some reason windows is telling me that the charge is at 100% as soon as it has started charging - I'm a little bit worried now, I can't leave it charging as I have to work.

It now says that battery wear is at 0% though!

Any ideas what is going on?

 

Reboot and it's fine - wear is at 4% again and it knows it's not fully charged and is getting on with it, I feel relieved - will only post again with a full set of results

 

jamestux,

Thanks for helping. Glad to see people helping out. It will be nice to hear the full results.

 

OK after a pretty much all nighter of working plus playing games and watching movies (all in the interests of science of course!) I can tell you that I got the exact same results the whole way through on my G1.

Designed Capacity : 69900mWh
Fully Charged Capacity : 66870mWh
Wear Level : 4%
Voltage : 16608mV

I hope that it helps - I'll be monitoring it now that I know it's supposed to become an issue after 2 - 4 months, you've got me paranoid

 

If your wear level does not increase after every full discharge/recharge cycle, you're in the clear so don't worry.

The 4% wear might be the result of normal wear, or the initial transient of the battery.

 

I'll run the test later when I get home from classes.

Either way, I purchased a new set of batteries for my Z71V (main and modular bay batteries) in December '06. The initial charge looked fine - 0% wear and the correct maximum charge mWh.

It's now mid February and I've got about 4-5% wear on both batteries. I'll jot this down as standard wear (?) - I use this laptop daily; it discharges below 50% regularly. My previous battery experienced extreme wear within about a years worth of usage (not heavy daily usage - but nonetheless some use) - I was at 47% wear on my main battery in 10 months.

Hope you guys figure something out. I think this is the one crucial flaw about ASUS that might deter me from purchasing a future model.

 

I was at 3-5% after my first ~4 months, then the rate drastically slowed.

It sucks for the people with V6s, V1s, and R1s, but I wouldn't be concerned about buying a new model 2 years down the line.

 

Well, thats the hope, but they have let it slide for several generations already, so either they know how to fix it and just won't for the current users, or they haven't fixed it and the next generations will have this problem.

 

OK, I ran the test last night, here are my results:

Make/Model: Asus V6j
Test (Complete, 25%, 50%, other): Complete Discharge
Did you recharge completely before using your computer? Yes
Did the computer hang at 0%? Yes, for roughly 30 min.

Start:
Fully Charged Capacity: 66510 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 66510 mWh
Wear Level: 13%
Voltage: 16197 mV
Source: MobileMeter


End:
Fully Charged Capacity: 62670 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 62670 mWh
Wear Level: 18%
Voltage: 16459 mV
Source: MobileMeter

I would say this test is exactly what we expected to see. I will run more to show that this is the only way to cause wear (compare to 50% discharge or 25% discharge). If you can, please help us out with your test results.

P.S. - Future testers, please copy this post, and fill in the sections for your results, that will make it easy to ensure that we have all of the information we need, and that it is easy for you to fill everything in.

 

Have had model for 4 mos, prior to this never ran battery past 80% dishcarge

Make/Model: Asus V6j
Test 50%, tried 25% twice. After reaching 50% drainage meter showed depletion at multiple numbers, (ie instead of 48,47, et, went 48, 42, 37) At 37% drainaged went immediately to 7% left. 37% drainage indicated over an hour was left, unit started shutdown.
Did you recharge completely before using your computer? Yes


Start of 50% test:
Fully Charged Capacity: 76035 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 75480mWh
Wear Level: 0%
Voltage: 15984mV
Source: MobileMeter

End of 50%, start of 1st 25%:
Fully Charged Capacity: 76035 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 75315 mWh
Wear Level: 0%
Voltage: 16016 mV
Source: MobileMeter

End of 1st 25%, start of 2nd 25%:
Fully Charged Capacity: 72195 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 71820mWh
Wear Level: 5%
Voltage: 16016 mV
Source: MobileMeter

End of 2nd 25%:
Fully Charged Capacity: 68355 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 67965mWh
Wear Level: 10%%
Voltage: 16016 mV
Source: MobileMeter

 

Caleb, how's the test going so far? Have we got any ammo to bring hell down on HQ?

 

HolyJeepers BatMan!
I just put in my spare battery and it says that it has a 24% wear and only 65579 mWh full capacity. That's roughly the equivilant of the 6cell battery and this is a 9cell

 

Mmmm looks like ASUS is not the only one plagued with battery wear issues...

We could hint those tech sites to write articles about this absolutely ridiculous issue

 

Were starting to get data. I will run lots of tests tonight and this weekend on mine, and maybe we can get more in here.

 

strange, my 24%wear battery getts better life than my 10% one.

 

Any actual test results yet?

 

Make/Model: Asus V6j
Test (Complete, 25%, 50%, other): 50% Discharge
Did you recharge completely before using your computer? Yes
Did the computer hang at 0%? Didn't get that far

Start:
Fully Charged Capacity: 62670 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 62670 mWh
Wear Level: 18%
Voltage: 16459 mV
Source: MobileMeter


End:
Fully Charged Capacity: 62670 mWh
Designed Capacity: 76500 mWh
Remaining Wattage: 62670 mWh
Wear Level: 18%
Voltage: 16459 mV
Source: MobileMeter

So, a "deep discharge" is at fault. Now we need more to establish this, and results that establish that a "deep discharge" shouldn't cause this.

 

almost, I'm going to discharge the second battery and post the results no later than tomorrow night.

 

Good. I hope you are the first of our saviors. I need proof that a full discharge should not increase wear level.

 

No, you don't. Quoting from the manual:

"Even if the battery is discharged once a day, it will last for at least an year."

This makes for *MAX* 0.27 % wear on a full discharge (100 / 365). And less than that when the battery is new, usually batteries drop faster when they are towards their end of life.

 

I think you'll have a hard time proving that a full discharge shouldn't increase wear level. It might be easier proving that a full discharge shouldn't increase the wear level so much. I just ran my battery down during classes the other day and my wear level jumped 5%. I'm almost afraid to run it down on purpose for this, but I probably will just out of curiosity.

 

i JUST THOUGHT THAT THIS WOULD BE IMPORTANT TO MENTION. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT MOBILE METER OR ANY OF THESE UTILS CAN ACURATELY READ BATTERY WEAR LEVEL. THE ONLY ACURATE READING YOU YOUR EYES. JUST BECUASE A UTIL SHOWS THAT BATTERY WEAR IS 20% DOES NOT MEAN THE BATTERY IS WORN OR WEARING. THESE UTILS ARE UNREALIABLE IN THE LEAST. MY OWN EXAMPLE IS MY AGING M5N WHICH SHOWS "ABNORMAL WEAR ON BOTH MY 3 AND 9 CELL. MY 3 CELL IS WORN TO WHERE IT ONLY LAST HALF OF ITS ORIGINAL LIFE WHICH CLEARLY SHOWS THE WEAR RATING IS WRONG. mY 9 CELL LASTS EXACTLY THE SAME AS IT DID A YEAR AGO. THIS THREAD CAN ONLY CREATE PANIC AND NOTHING MORE. THUS FAR THERE HAVE BEEN TWO VERY POPULAR MODELS WHICH HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO HAVE INHERENT BATTERY ISSUES

1. ASUS Z71V WHICH HAD CLOSE 100% FAILURE ON ALL SHIPMENTS IN 2005. I MY SELF CAN ATEST TO THAT BECASE WE HAVE REPLACED PRETTY MUCH ALL THE BATTERIES WE HAVE SHIPPED WITH THE Z71V FOR NEW REVISED VERSIONS
2. V6J WHICH MAY HAVE HAD A BAD BATCH OVERSEAS. iT HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN THAT THESE BATTERIES ARE ALL BAD. iNFACT OUT OF A FEW DOZEN UNITS WE SHIPPED IN THE STATES IN EARLY TO MID 2006 ONLY 1 BATTERY WAS RETURNED.
i CANT SPEAK FOR OTHER MODELS WHICH ARE NOT POPULAR BUT I WILL RULE OUT ALL OF THE BELOW FROM BATTERY DEFECTS
1. ALL OF Z70 SERIES. THESE BATTERIES HAVE NO ISSUES
2. ALL OF REVISED Z71V SERIES BATTERIES SHIPPED AFTER EARLY 2006 STARTING WITH SERIAL 61**
3. ALL OF W3 SERIES INCLUDING Z63A, W3A, W3V, W3J
4. ALL OF A8 SERIES INCLUDING A8JS, A8JM AND SO ON
5. ALL OF Z96 SERIES, INCLUDING Z96J, S96J
6. ALL OF Z35 SERIES
7. ALL OF W5 SERIES INCLUDING W5F, W5A,,,,
8. ALL OF W7J SERIES

mY FINAL ADVICE IS. IF YOU VALUE YOUR BATTERY DO NOT USE ANY VOLT OR BATTERY METER. WINDOWS BASE BATTERY METER WORKS JUST FINE. IF YOU CAN PHYSCIALLY SEE THAT YOUR BATTERY LIFE IS STEADILY DECREASING EVERY TIME YOU USE IT I WOULD SAY THAT IS CAUSE FOR CONCERN. a BATTERY WEAR METER IS NOT A SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN DEVICE THAT CAN TELL YOU THE STATE OF YOUR BATTERY. iF YOU USE YOUR BATTERY EVERY SINGLE DAY EXPECT NOTICEABLE WEAR AFTER HALF YEAR AND LOTS OF WEAR OR POSSIBLY FAILURE AFTER 1 YEAR.

 

I say this makes whatever util your are using faulty not the battery. Use windows battery meter to monitor your battery life. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that the battery is bad just becuase some generic util says its wear is excesive while windows battery meter says the time left is the same as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before. How do we knwo that these battery meters which probe the battery constantly are not responsible for battery deterioration? how do we know these utils are safe?

 

I just wanted to say from all I've read and observed in the past that you should never let the battery fully discharge on purpose... The Lithium-Ion batteries need a certain leftover charge in order to build up and if you leave it until the system actually runs completely dry and turns itself off you're weakening the battery a lot. It would be expected to damage it in that case, and it's against the suggested operating instructions (And I think the manual for my last laptop, if not this one, advised against it quite emphatically).

I read this in a bunch of online articles/guides and I did discharge my old laptop 4 or 5 times fully on my last vacation (before reading the guides of course, and the crappy times I got after that is why I read them...) and it took it 2 weeks of normal cycling from 100%-1% to recover to about 50%-60% of the preformance it had been before my abuse of it... The other tests should be fine, but I wouldn't let it run down completely if I were you....

Cat

"Lithium-ion batteries should never be depleted to empty (0%). " - Wiki on Li-Ion batteries (there are other articles and guides out there that I've read in the past, this is just one I found now to confirm as I post this...)

From the same article: "At a 100% charge level, a typical Li-ion laptop battery that is full most of the time at 25 degrees Celsius or 77 degrees Fahrenheit, will irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year. However, a battery stored inside a poorly ventilated laptop may be subject to a prolonged exposure to much higher temperatures than 25 °C, which will significantly shorten its life."

Just putting some more info out there for this discussion...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lithium-ion

 

Forgive me if I'm dense, but what is the point of this? Seriously. I'm just not seeing the point.

Asus doesn't manufacture the batteries. I don't recall the manual saying anything like "we guarantee x amount of hours of battery life/wear", so there's no breach of contract. Given the nearly inifinite number of ways an NB could be configured and used, it would be impossible to guarantee.

But isn't Asus the only NB manufacturer to give a one-year warranty on batteries? Aren't battery warranties usually 3 or 6 months?

So, it seems to me, that if you believe you have a bad battery, the easiest and most helpful thing to do would be to get a replacement from Asus. If my batter life went from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours in a couple of months, yeah, I'd be ticked. If it went from 2.5 hours to 2.25 hours, I wouldn't really be that surprised.

Plus, returning the batteries gives Asus a chance to determine if there are faulty batteries and issue a recall, if needed.

 

Brent
not everyone is as easy going as your self. Some people treat their notebooks like their million dollar car. Why do people use battery wear meters? probably for the same reason people go to war with iraq. The battery may turn nuclear and explode. Its silly i know and half this forum knows but the other half of this forum are a bunch of neurotic, nit picking, ocd, obsesive nerds who happen to buy from me and every other vendor. Someone asked the other day why this forum is so popular and why are so many people complaining. I think its becuase asus targets the most neurotic people on the planet. no offense ofcourse.

 

No offense on my part.

Didn't mean to sound overly critical.

Just was curious about the reasoning. Plus, experience on othe forums has been more like "Oh oh oh !!! I found a problem. If enough people have it, we can sue!!!" Generally, that's not the case.

So my apologies if I jumped the gun.

 

Let me explain through this. I thank you for posting Eddie, but no offense plz don't make a post with all caps, it is way too hard to figure out what your stating.

In anycase, many know me here, I have been overlooking everything in this forum, reading and posting as much I can, I remember the first signs of battery wear, those Z71V users and V6 series users.

I personally even told them to not trust 3rd Party programs to calculate and measure battery wear %.

Now that I own a laptop, the V1JP which is exhibiting the wear % problem this allows me to get a first hand experience on the issue as a user.

Here's what I have found, these are my facts from what I've read and have experienced.

I used 4 devices and monitored them all. Coolmon2, NHC, Everest Ultimate and Windows Battery Miser.

Coolmon2 is able to read battery life, but it is in seconds, also displays discharge rate.
NHC also displays battery life and discharge rate.
Everest Ultimate displays so much information that helped me understand what's going on with my laptop.
Windows Battery Miser is good, and shows % and battery life.

From my findings, if you all didn't know, all these programs base their numbers from Windows, especially battery life. Let me give you an example, and what I am arguing.

These programs display their data, which is fine, but where does it get the data from? It gets it from windows itself. How do I know it is because with my work with Coolmon2, I am able to see how data is retrieved and displayed.

When I first got my laptop, I got 3 hours of battery life, as stated in the review I made. I also showed this in 2 ways, my discharge rate was on average 22-24 watts per hour and the battery is 77whr. Meaning you will get 3 hours on the V1JP, doing light tasks, low brightness and WIFI on.

Guess what, all my programs showed exactly the same amount of battery life. Windows battery miser, NHC and Everest. This shows that all these programs are getting their data from the same source within windows.

Now that I have this battery wear problem I have been testing it. Here's what I have found out, all these programs are able to read wear % correctly, there are very little problems with their ability to display the information.

The problem is the source of information. You must be how I came up to this conlcusion. As mentioned before I have a wear % problem, My wear is 30%.

Meaning I only get 2 hours and 15 minutes of battery life, and all my programs show this, including the windows battery miser.

Here's what I did different. You know how we usualy have the laptop set to Hibernate at 5% charge, I removed that. Guess what happened after 2 hours of use on my laptop?

Well you guessed it, my laptop ran for another 1 hour with the charge stating 0%...how can this be? Here's the problem, it is the source of the information which is problematic. Not the battery, not the programs, it is the source, Bender would state it is the ACPI, I personally wouldn't know 100%.

Guess what I also discovered...after the laptop lasted 3 hours, it showed me that programs i am using are correctly doing their job, just that the source of the information is wrong, but also ruled out bad batteries. So what happens when your laptop when you don't have that 5% hibernate setting turned on?

For me I purposely let the laptop turn off, while having all my programs and applications running. I plugged in the AC adapter and voila, everything was still there, as if it was in hibernate. This surprised me and showed that I can now use my laptop for 3 hours and not care about losing data since it will just hibernate with 0% charge.

Now jsis offered a possible solution that could have possibly solved this problem. I personaly attempted his solution twice and both time it raised my wear % up by 5, so I initially had 20%, then add 5%, then add another 5%, to get a grand total of 30%.

With knowing all this from my own testing, and from jsis, this shows that both the battery and programs are not at fault here. jsis's solution worked for him, and his wear % is now 0 and his programs in which display battery life are now correctly displaying them, until the battery wear % starts to act up. Once again, the problem is the source of this information, being the ACPI or something else internally. This will require someone who knows about programming and the internal workings to figure this out.

I am currently on my reading week, meaning I have a 1 week break from school, I have lots of school work and computer work I plan on accomplishing. The first thing I am going to be attempting is a complete clean install of Windows XP Pro on my laptop. This is not to help with my battery wear, but now I have the time to get my laptop running as fast as possible without all this bloatware in my laptop which I have removed already. But I still would like to format, since that's what I do to my desktops every 6 months if needed.

Another small issue some may already be experiencing is that the laptop charges to irregular percentages, like 93% or 99% and won't hit 100%, in my opinion don't worry, just consider it as a true 100% since the source of this information is just having problems again. Sometimes restarting the laptop or unplugging it for a small amount of time, then the program would report 100%, other than that don't worry about it.

I know I have said a lot, if anyone has something to add to want to discuss, I will be here, don't worry I got 2 more desktops in which I able to be contactable.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I agree with you that the tests asked for are very subjective depeding on what one is running at the time. I did it because I was working on another computer, so let the V6J run. Caleb asked for mobilemeter, so ran it before and after the "test". It was the Windows battery monitor that went from 37% down to 7% in less than 60 seconds in my case. Did not allow the machine to discharge completely, but if it the Windows XP monitor is correct, I am getting cheated out of about an hour.

Most batteries only last about a year if used consistently. In the past I have had batteries last less, some more. Just the nature of the beast.

Was happy to help Caleb out, was surprised to see my results, but guys, don't get so upset. Maybe we are neurotic nerds, but so what......

 

This is a myth...

The charging/discharging circuit in a modern Li-Ion battery will shut it down before the minimum charge level that allows recharging is reached. That's the whole point of the on-battery battery management system. It won't *let* you get to an *actual* 0% state, regardless of what the operating system states. Heck, that protection may be whole some of you are seeing issues.

The only problem is if you *store* the battery in this state - then it might eventually self-discharge to below the point at which it can be recharged.

Best summary I've ever found is here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-19.htm

That wiki article is one of the worst I have ever seen - don't bother with it. It's nothing but a string of disconnected sentences.

 

Well, if some1 can spend $2,000+ on a notebook, surely can spare some $100+ for an extra battery right? So what the fuss?

I owned HP, after 4 1/2 months used the wear is already 19%. So I will consider another battery in 7-9 months time. So cheers-up, a battery won't last your forever. I'm happy if my batt last me 1 year +/-.

 

the question still remains how does battery wear affect battery life? sure sometimes it can mean that there is less life but from personal experience i ve found that battery wear is not correct nor does it relate to battery life just using my notebooks. Then i ve seen people return batteries claiming wear and sure enough the batteries only last half of what you would expect. use the battery dont cherish it. it is not designed to last forever thats for sure

 

Listen, I have crunched the numbers before, and I can tell you that the wear percentage is within 5 minutes 99% of the time. If I take current battery life, factor the wear percentage, it is a good measure. Maybe this isn't a big deal to some people, but if Asus advertises that the computer I paid nearly $2000 for as having 4.5 hours of battery life, but I only get two (after wear kicks in), that is ridiculous. Why then not advertise a 6.0 Ghz processor and say, "oh, now it only runs at 2.0 Ghz". Furthermore, why let this go? If it is a problem (no one is denying that it is), why not have Asus fix it. Isn't that the people that work for Asus' job? I know they sit there and write new drivers for notebooks all the time, why not fix this? Also, its recurring. There are wear problems in the Z71, V6, and now V1. Rumor has it the R1 and G1 are affected. So, when does it end? Why not here? This may not be a perfect test, but it is consistent, and I aim to show one thing, and one thing only. Using your battery below 10% or below 30% should not increase the wear. Other computers don't have this problem, so why does mine? Put yourself in my shoes, with any product. Say you buy a car that advertises 40 MPG but only gets 20, you wouldn't be happy, Its inconvenient and wrong for the company to do that. Or say you buy an 80GB iPod with only 40GB of space, is that OK?

 

spoken like a true store owner not wanting customers returning batteries left right and center.


Time you looked at the issue for the consumers side mate.
Whatever the problem is, there is a problem (I've had 1 battery confirmed faulty and replaced for me by Asus this year). Whether it lies with the battery, BIOS, windows (its not windows as same results are achieved under linux) The matter remains, there is a problem and it needs to be addressed.

You can talk all you like about how you should use it, but if my car started only doing 2 miles per gallon after 8 months I'd be looking for a fix. ( just had the put the car analogy in there )

**EDIT** didnt see the car analogy above


Insane

 

Yes, it's ture hat ASUS had problem with their battery life. If u can't live with that, choose other brand. No 1 point a gun at your head ask u to choose ASUS right?
Look, all notebook had their own problem/s. If u can find a 100% functional perfect notebook please let me know coz i will buy if even it's $5,000.00

 

Ok, well I have hit a stump on my V1JP, reinstalled Windows using EBE's guide, but then ended up installing Windows using my own CD because I can't be bothered with the section on NTFS 4K clusters, it looks a little cumbersome.

Anyone remember that Black Screen, Blank Screen problem, well guess what, it happened to me too, LOL. I have spent over 1 hour working on a Fix for it, I think I may have came up with a fix.

My laptop is roughly 50% complete in terms of all programs installed and settings that I need.

If you wondering how my laptop got the Black/Blank Screen problem, I was just playing with the User Accounts, after that it asked me to restart my laptop, now that I have all the settings correct, and BAM, Black screen. I was like, darn! not this problem, this has got to be one of the worst notebook problems ever, because you can't do anything.

Anyways, I am almost done fixing this problem 75%, and once that is done, I will continue to install more programs and get NHC installed to see if anything happened to my wear %; negative or positive.

Eddie, no offense to you or anyone out there who does not have one of the 4 laptop that exhibit this problem, be it the V6 series, V1 series, R1 series and Z71v and possibly the G1.

You really, REALLY need to own a V1JP or a R1F and then experience the wear problem to understand what is going on, otherwise your just shooting into water. As for my previous post I explained everything that I have experienced, but just in case, let me explain things again.

In my experience, the battery wear % in which I used two programs to verify that the numbers are correct, are showing abnormal wear percentages.

Upon further research and testing, I have found only ONE solution, but many explanations as well.

Explanations:
1) All programs are able to calculate the wear % correctly based on the source information.
2) The source information is the ACPI according to Bender, I personally am not 100% sure, but at least it is a start.
3) Windows, and its battery miser also follows with NHC battery life in hours and minutes.
4) Example, if my wear is 30% according to NHC then my battery life is 2 hours and 15 minutes, hovering your mouse over the windows battery miser also shows 2 hours and 15 minutes.
5) This shows that all these programs are getting their source data and information from the SAME source (ACPI).

Solution
In the Power section, click on Alarms, then uncheck Critical battery alarm. This will prevent Windows from shutting down or hibernating once the battery miser hits 0% charge.
YES this means your battery miser will show 0% charge and will still last for XX amount of minutes, usually you can calculate this based on your wear % and discharge rate. For me 30% wear and a discharge rate of 22-24 watts is equal to almost 1 hour of added battery life.

If you didn't understand what just happened, here the conclusion. Batter wear is calculated by something (ACPI) and then it can be displayed using third party programs, which will be accurate according to the source of the data.

The difference is your real battery has 0% wear or something really small like 5% wear max.

The key is the alarm system in windows, this system uses the semi-false data from the ACPI and will shut down your laptop at 0% charge despite the battery truly having a considerable amount of charge left, usually equal to the amount of wear % shown by a 3rd party program.

So what's the problem? Both Windows and third party programs will now only show the WRONG information, which is 30% and 2 hours of battery life, so this poses 2 small problems that are annoying now.
1) We can't truly check our REAL wear %
2) We can't truly know our REAL battery life, we can guess it using discharge rate and the amount of watts in the battery.

I suggest if any reseller would like to attempt to experience this, take a V1JP, use it for 1 month, in fact, just keep discharging it, and use NHC + Windows Battery miser and watch what happens to the Wear % and battery life, while you keep the critical alarm ON. Once you found that you have a considerable amount of wear %, like 30%, turn off the Critical Alarm and do a REAL battery life test, just like the one I did for my review and you will end up with your max battery life.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

You know advertised battery life is a good 30% over average always. its the same thing with dell advertised laptops @ 4lbs while they are really 6lbs. the battery life by all odms and eoms is blown out of proportion. I bet if you really really try you probably can get 4 hours out of it, though obviously its the equivalent of getting mpg on a car. it all depends on how you drive and most of us dont use the pc on 10% brightness while its sitting doing nothing. If you dont like it or feel like youre not getting what its posed to get contact asus and say "i am only getting 2hours out of it while your site advertised 4.5. I am not here to defend their product i would be the first to say that some of their batteries dont make much sense. like comparing w7j to z35f. with the dedicated video card silenced why do they have almost 30% difference in life? or why dont they make standardized batteries for atleast some ensembles like they do for barebones. or why do they use 6 cell batteries in laptops that should atleast have 8 cells. or why dont they make the modular battery for all or most of their models. And lastly why do they have so many chasis. out of all the oems and odms asus has the widest variety of chassis. this is what is driving up their prices of notebooks. simplyfy your line onto a a few chassis that work. like w3 for example. How do you know battery wear is not a simple calculation of how much voltage your laptop is eating while its charging or discharging? what if its the same for batteries in models across the globe. not just asus? what if half of the asus lineup used the same cells that exibit this wear upon first discharge? if you got 2.5 hours out of your 8 cell in the v1j i would call that low to avg life. what did you expect to get? if you are watching a movie on it i would say that is what you should expect. if you are playing music the same. if you are browsing the internet 100% brightness about the same. if you are sitting looking at a blank wallpaper with 10% then maybee you can expect 4 hours of life.

 

my battery on my W2J is 45% wear level!! The laptop is only 7 months old is this classed as abnormal wear? battery only lasts for 1 hour?

 

I would say that is abnormal if you dont use the batttery much. if you use it on battery every single day would say it is expected but not always the rule. have you ran battery recalibration in bios? you should try if you have never done so

 

My personal believe, despite no real evidence is that your battery should only wear roughly 0.5% to 1% a month. I know I specifically have ZERO proof for my assumption and statement but do me one favor.

Take your W2J, and state what was your initial battery life when you first got it.

Like this:

2.5 Hours
- Screen Brightness 50%
- WIFI On
- Light Tasks, browsing internet and typing
- P4G setting Quiet Office

So state it like that, and then do what I said in the above post, TURN OFF The Critical Alarm, located: right click on the desktop, properties, screen saver, power, alarms, and un-check the critical alarm. Now perform a battery life test using the same settings as your did to get your first battery life, and see what you get. Don't get scared once your Charge % hits Zero, just keep working on it and using it. Use a timer to help calculate your battery life.

Good Luck!

EDIT: If your battery life after turning off the Critical Alarm gets something like 1 hour and 30 minutes or less, this means your ACPI (assuming) and wear % are REAL, means you have truly bad battery, and you can get it replaced by Asus, and hope this doesn't repeat.
If your battery life gets something close to what you originally had, this means your W2J is experiencing what we are, and this means you ACPI (assuming) is giving out abnormal data to your laptop and causing the Wear % to go high, and your battery is FINE, but there's something wrong with the ACPI (assuming) and unfortunately there aren't many W2 owners to help discuss about their experiences with the battery.

Thanks,

MysticGolem