HELP! UL80VT battery

I bought the UL80VT fairly recently, at first i was able to have a battery life of almost 8-9 hrs with medium brightness while surfing with WLAN. About a week ago I changed the critical battery level to 2% under the power option so I could squeeze a little bit more battery (had to get work done and didn't have my charger). And after that, it seems my battery life decreased to 6.5 hrs with LOW brightness with WLAN on when it is charged 100%. I normally take the battery out when i'm at home so the battery wouldn't be charging all the time. Did i kill my battery from changing the critical level or is there just something wrong with my battery? I believe the laptop came with a 8 cell or a 9 cell.

 

Sounds like those numbers are the values the computer quotes you. Are you actually losing out on the 2hrs (ie, are you noticing a marked decrease in usage times)?

 

Frequent full-discharges of lithium-ion batteries (like the one used in the UL80VT) will significantly reduce the amount of charge it can store in subsequent chargings, and even more so if you lower the critical battery level. In fact if it ever gets too low, the battery will refuse to charge using the normal charger and you pretty much end up with a dead battery.

You can read more about Li-ion batteries here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

To see the exact amount of charge it can currently store and how much capacity loss it has suffered, use HWMonitor which can be downloaded from here: http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

 

well i downloaded hwmonitor and here are my results with 82% battery (5hr 23 min) low brightness battery saving mode WLAN on

 

Man I feel sick when I see mine (after only 7 months use, 100% charged):

 

can't really go by the windows battery life estimator since it fluctuates too much

that's pretty terrible after 7 months of use? isn't the battery warrantied for 1 year?

 

Hmm, I've had my UL80VT for 2 months now and the full charge capacity of my battery is only slightly lower than yours. Mine is currently at 79035 mWh. How long have you had yours? I think it still seems okay, but keep an eye on those numbers and see how much they drop in the coming weeks. Oh, and better restore the critical battery level to its original settings if you don't want to end up with a dead battery prematurely.

Ouch, my condolences man. What's weird is that the current charge is actually higher than the full capacity charge. I'm guessing your battery's internal capacity gauge is currently out of whack. A battery calibration via complete full discharge and recharge can fix that, but that will also reduce the full capacity charge further. There's just no way to win against Li-ion battery death.

 

I sold the notebook and just kept the spare battery for my other notebook, so I don't think warranty is valid anymore.

Thanks, I'm calibrating as we speak, I have another battery so it's not a big problem, just thought I would share a horror story

 

Might be totally different on the netbook versus notebook, but I recently called Asus to inquire on the battery warranty and was told it was 6 months for my EEE 1000H.

 

ya i've had mine for about a month and a bit. the thing is i dont use the battery much, i always take the battery out when im at home and i just plug in the charger. But damn this really sucks i miss the 9hr+ battery life =(.

One more thing i seem to be having problems with my video card. I can't switch to the dedicated graphics card without basically reinstalling all the display drivers everytime. I get an error under device manager for GeForce210M 'Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)'. Currently i have 195.62 installed and my intel driver is 8.15.10.1986. Any idea on how i can fix this problem? Did you guys get the VGA patch from the Asus site?

 

The only hybrid graphics driver that currently works is the one from Asus available on the Asus support download page for the UL80VT since it's a custom driver for switchable graphics to work. Official drivers from Nvidia and Intel will definitely have problems if installed on the UL80VT. There's just no other way around it at the moment, and Asus seems to be too busy trying to attract new customers with new models that they have no resources left to support existing customers. The VGA patch is pretty much useless and Asus will not say what it's supposed to fix or even if it fixes anything at all.

 

oh.. i thought i was the only one with this problem but anyways thanks for clearing this up !! Are you using the latest intel drivers?

 

The Intel drivers are already included in the hybrid graphics driver package from Asus, as well as the Nvidia HD audio driver for HDMI sound support. Updating the Intel drivers using the official drivers may mess up the switchable graphics mode. However, the Nvidia HD audio driver may be updated using Windows Update.

 

I would install the batterybar software which tells you what the actual battery drain is. So you can find out if in some situation the drain is to high. To estimate the battery time operation just devide the diesplayed battery capacity by the displayed power drain.