F3T Battery and Charger problems

Hi, i was wondering if anyone else is having problems with these.

I've got an F3T that's about 1.5 years old. The battery, although it shows 98 % charge and about 50 min left of running time, runs out in about 3 min... I tried calibration in the bios but no luck. Is my battery just at the end of its life time?.

There's also an occassional screen brightness issue, it's starts flickering (not turning off and on, it's more like a fast brightness variation). When i unplug the charger, the flicker goes away.

I assume there is something wrong with the charger. If the charger is bad, maybe it's not correctly charging the battery then...

So I really don't know if the problem is the charger, or battery or both...

Does anyone know anything about this?.

Thanks.

 

get rmclock, see what it says in Battery Info. if the max capacity is significantly less than the designed capacity (like 20 or 30%), then it probably is at the end of its life.

i dont know how you would test the charger other than having a watt meter, so you should probably contact asus about it.

 

Take the battery out and let it run on AC power only. If it still flickers, it could be the inverter or the AC adapter going bad. Since it's 1.5 years old the best thing to do would be to start a support ticket with ASUS and send it in for warranty service before it's too late.

 

The battery is probably nearly dead; unless (as you say) the charger is bad and then you can't trust it to charge properly.

As to the flicker. If it wouldn't go away when you unplug, I would say it's the inverter going bad, or maybe the inverter cables being interrupted. But the fact that it goes away when you unplug makes this less likely. Possibilities:

Either the charger or the power itself is bad. Try a different power socket. Try a different charger if you have one...

There is some ACPI problem with the brightness settings. Remove Power4Gear, reinstall ATK drivers. Maybe test to see if it happens in a Live Linux (in which case it's certainly not software).

If it's not software, I second the recommendation above of getting it fixed from warranty (unless you happen to be in the UK where ASUS service is bad).

 

Thanks for the replies, I think the adapter might be bad. I removed the battery and it still flickers. So maybe it's not charging the battery the way it's supposed to.

I tested the voltage with a multimeter. Output from the charger is 19.9V. It has a 1 year warranty, and i'm in Argentina. I'll check if there is any kind of asus service here.

Anyway I guess i'll have to buy another charger and see what happens.

 

Try also a Live Linux CD to eliminate any chance of a software problem, before you invest money in solving it.

You could try to find a generic compatible charger with an ASUS tip (since that may be cheaper than trying to obtain an original ASUS part at your location).

 

if you cant find one with a compatible tip, chopping and soldering the old tip is always a (potentially dangerous) possibility

is the voltage within .2V of the charger specification? (usually its written on the brick itself)

 

It should output 19V according to specs. So I'm measuring .9V more.

Voltages aren't usually exact, but it's almost 1V more than it should be.

 

i pulled .2 out of my a**, since im getting 19.2 on my g50v. from what i remember reading (dont remember where), the laptop will only use the amps it needs, but voltages are a bit more sensitive... anyone else have a meter handy and wants to check the variation?