L5GX questions

first off, i just bought a L5GX from geared2play.com, and folks, i cannot stress enough how great this company is. if you intend on buying an Asus whitebook, i highly suggest you give them a look and email before you finalize any deal. i am that happy with them.

anyways, my biggest problem has been battery life. Asus's spec sheet for the L5 claims around 2.5 hours of battery life, and i am confounded how they came up with this number.

i first installed win2000 pro on it, thinking it was less demanding than XP, but then went ahead and installed XP Pro SP2, mainly because it supports HT. i have tried everything, including: all of BlackVipers service tweaks, disabling the modem, 10/100/1000 LAN (i am using the Intel 2200BG), pcmcia cards, card readers, com/printer ports, and even the sound. i lowered the color depth to 16bit, and screen res to 800x600, removed the wallpaper, disabled the themes, removed Anti-Virus and any background programs i can get away with, + running Power4 Gear, and i can still only push the battery life to 1 hour, 20 minutes. [xx(]

only thing i have not messed with is the system bios, but i cannot seem to access them. i have tried booting holding control, then i tried F8, and also hitting ESC (which only brought up a boot device menu). I installed the latest bios from Asus.com, and have tried looking everywhere but to no avail, what am i missing?

i love the L5GX, and i could live with a 2 hour battery limit, i would just buy another battery or two, so i could at least work with Word2003 at school, without having to be next to a wall socket (if they would even let me use the power).

any suggestions, and please help me access the bios!

btw, as soon as i get everthing sorted out, i intend on posting a review w/pics...

[ ]

later

 

to access the BIOS, press either DEL, F1, or F2.
one of those should work

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, ASUS Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700

 

F2 it was!

thanks a million!