How do you guys increase your Asus Z71V battery life?

I'm currently using my dad's Asus Z71V for school. Hopefully I'll get my own laptop within the coming months, but in the meantime I have his to use. The problem is that the battery life on his laptop is really bad. The system consist of 1gb of ram, Geforce 6600, PM 1.73ghz, 80 GB hard drive, and DVD drive can only last for about 2 hours. I just surf the net, chat, and use MS word. I know one way to extend battery life is to get a bigger battery or use a battery in place of the optical drive. I'm avoiding that route because I don't intend to use my dad's laptop for long. Second, I heard I can underclock the notebook, but I'm not sure how beneficial that would be. Does anyone here have any numbers for me to play with? Like what clockspeed and at what voltage and what your battery life is like? I don't have time to experiment around and would appreciate if someone can help me out on this. Thanks!

 

Undervolting it should help it quite a bit. Also, how old is the laptop? The battery might of had some wear

 

Almost a year old and I got a new battery from Asus not too long ago.

 

Does anyone know what a average wear rate is? eg, %wear per month with around 1 change per day.


insane

 

We recommend that the battery can be used a level as low as possible, then fully charge it again. It will a little bit help to save it a longer life if doing it everytime. According to this model's battery having higher failure rate, no one guarantee how long the life will be. One thing for sure is that Asus can replace it for users as long as it is still under warranty.

 

Just download centrino hardware control. when on battery set the clock to 800mhz and at .700 volts should be fine.

 

if you want to condition your battery (which will most likely improve life) restart it, press F2 to enter bios and in there there is an option that says 'condition battery', this will probably take a while because it goes into dos mode and just runs the battery out, but it's probably the best way to improve your battery life.

 

To the best of my knowledge, the "calibrate battery" option in BIOS only allows the computer to more accurately reflect the percentage battery charge remaining. It has no effect on the battery itself, with the one exception that if the battery itself is bad, then running it through calibration is a good way to "finish it off", as bad batteries tend to become signally worse after going through calibration.