Notebook Longevity

Hey guys, I'm far from an expert on notebooks, but I'd like to know something..

A few years ago I bought an ASUS Z96J.. This was my first experience with owning a notebook. Granted, the notebook had a pretty good ATI video card, but it never seemed to hold a charge very well. After a while of owning it (I'm unsure of a time frame, but it seemed within a few months of ownership), it basically needed to be plugged in to run. It would die after 10 to 15 minutes, even with settings and brightness turned down. Now if I charge it and leave it overnight, I have to plug it in before I can even use it. It has also slowed down quite a bit. When loading games it often takes a very long time to load. My friend has some older VAIO laptop that is much older and it loads certain games faster than my Z96J.

I just want to know if there is something I may have done wrong as far as maintenance that might have diminished the performance of both the battery and the notebook itself. Is there anything I can do to ensure maximum performance? As I just bought a new G50, I'd like it to last a while and hopefully be able to keep a charge after a few years and still run well and fast.

Thanks for any advice!

-J

 

I'd heard that the 6 cell that comes with that model is not too great out of the box; but it certainly lasts longer than you've mentioned. 10-15 minutes is a pretty terrible battery life - what type of battery is it?

Modern day Li-Ion batteries don't really need much care and attention; except for the very first charge - which should be left charging the recommended time by the manufacturer and typically this will mean not using the laptop on battery power alone until this time has been accounted for (using on AC power is fine though).

Alas some batteries are just not up to scratch; could be yours was somehow faulty?

 

Batteries depending on chemistry and how they're maintained can last upwards of 3 years. Older NiMH batteries don't like to be topped off as they develop a memory. But modern batteries are Li-ION and they prefer to be charged and topped off as much as possible.

Draining a Lithium Ion all the way down will reduce its over all capacity, though sometimes if your taking a measurement you are seeing a more accurate picture of the batteries current capacity and not necesarilly a drop from that particular instance of drain.

Keep your battery charged, don't let it sit discharged. I don't like to let it go past 20% but this is debateable. Don't be afraid to plug it in, ASUS's design wont charge the battery if its "to soon". I only had my last laptop 2 years but it was within 75% of design charge by the time i got rid of it and hell it wasnt more than 90% of design charge when i got it.

As far as the notebooks performance goes, a clean install of windows and all the proper drivers would be a start.

 

Oh, and ideally you don't want to have the laptop plugged in for lengthy periods of time, as this causes the battery to be in a constant state of charging. Some systems are a little smarter than others, but most will simply keep topping the battery up. Whilst this will do no real damage, it will slightly reduce the batteries lifespan (not drastically though).

If you are going to be having a marathon session on your laptop, unplug the power cable for a short while and let the battery drain before plugging back into the juice. An alternative that some people recommend is to remove the battery all together when running from AC power. Some laptops will not turn on in this instance though.

EDIT: Just seen previous post; seems this ASUS is one of those machines that is a little smarter and therefore no need to worry about steps mentioned above.

 

To put it blatantly, your battery is almost dead. This is typical for all lithium rechargeable batteries as their life will continuously decrease once it's manufactured. The only way to go from here it so purchase a battery replacement. The typical life span of a notebook battery is 1-3 years depending on your usage habits. In the future, you may want to calibrate your battery every few months or so to prolong its life.

As for your overall performance issues, there's some basic maintenance that should be able to help such as defrag your hard drive, clean out the lint from your fan/heatsink/heat spreader, clean your registry, scan & clean for viruses/maleware.

 

Thanks for the info regarding the battery. Sounds like I didn't really do anything wrong.. Maybe it was just a bad battery with a shorter lifespan from the factory.

As far as the slow performance, the problem is that I've done clean format/reinstalls of windows a few times and even after that, it still runs slowly. I went for probably 2.5 years with the original install of XP, then after noticing the severe performance issues, decided to reinstall.

 

In his best Austin Powers voice

It's all chemistry baby, yeah

 

How does on calibrate a battery? Let is drain every few weeks all the way down?

I am getting an ASUS 1000HE and its battery is supposed to have a long life. I plan to take it to school and then charge it at the end of the night or maybe 2 nights.

 

Check the link below for instructions on calibrating your Asus

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122632#batterycali

 

This is incorrect. Li-Ion batteries do not need any preparation. While I would recommend fully charging the battery when it is received, it is not going to damage the battery in any way by not doing this.

David

 

Sorry, this is all wrong. ALL laptops work like the ASUS as mentioned.

Li-Ion batteries cannot be trickle-charged once they are fully charged. If they are, it will damage the batteries. What happens, is that once the battery is full, the charger turns off. It will not turn on again until the battery charge level drops a certain amount. In the laptops I have checked (two older Dell, a Thinkpad T40, and two recent ASUS), the level is 95%. So, if you unplug your laptop for long enough to move from the table to the couch, it is unlikely the charger will turn on. But if you keep it unplugged for a while and the battery drops to 94%, the charger will turn on when plugged in.

If the laptop is used on power all the time, the battery charge level will eventually drop to the recharge point. This is due to self-discharge of the battery. All rechargeable battery types will self-discharge but Li-Ion has the lowest level of all types. The figure I have seen quoted is less than 5% per month, but there are some other things going on that will speed this up in a laptop battery. For my ASUS F3Sv, I recently calculated it to be about 10 days to loose 5%.

Removing the battery is a common suggestion. I don't do this as I use the battery most days. Plus I want the backup of having the battery. The reason to remove the battery is to protect it from heat coming from the laptop. Li-Ion batteries age and as they get older, the ability to hold a charge goes down. The speed of aging goes up with temperature. So, if your laptop is heating the battery (other than when it is being charged or used), then it might be a good idea to remove the battery and store it correctly.

David

 

I am surprised that no-one pointed to the Notebook Battery Guide. Everyone should read it to decide how to care for their batteries. Also, while this is written for laptops, the general rules apply to all Li-Ion batteries. ie. Your phone and your iPod.

David

 

If you're going to replace the battery anyway you could try the "slap" technique. The idea is to bring the flat side of the battery down onto a hard surface with enough force to generate about 3Gs of deceleration. This theoretically is supposed to realign the internal lattice structure and allow ions to move more freely, giving added life to the battery.

Sorry if I have the details wrong; I read about this in a computer mag a couple of years ago and my recall is pretty hazy.

I've tried it twice, with 50% success: on one machine it did nothing, on another it brought the battery back from holding about 15 minutes of charge to about 45 minutes. However the improvement was not permanent: within a few months it wouldn't hold a charge at all.

If you're replacing the battery anyway you've got nothing to lose and a decent run-time backup battery to gain.

Davidfor does this sound possible or am I promoting urban myth and coincidence?

 

I have to admit my first reaction was to laugh. I lean heavily towards the urban myth and coincidence. A little bit of googling doesn't find a reference to this. The only thing I can find is a safety data sheet for some Li-Ion batteries that advises "Do not give a strong mechanical shock or fling."

A quick look at the Battery University doesn't give anything to back it up. It doesn't have anything that I think backs up the reason given (realigning internal lattice) for this to work. But, if the battery is only giving 15 minutes of life, it probably won't harm to try it.

David

 

I might have read it back in the nickel metal hydride days, I can't remember. Definitely not something to try until the next stop for the battery is the recycling bin, but at that point, why not?

 

My G50Vt-A2 is now around 5 months old and seems to store pretty much the same charge as when I got it (2-3 hours depending on usage).

I use it for probably 3-4 hours each day on average (far more on some days and not at all on others).

 

WoooooW how did you got 2-3 hour out of the battery

my A1 can work MAAAAAAAAAX 1 hour and a fraction!!!!

At battery saving mode....

 

Yeah, I'd be interested in knowing the trick too. My guess is that Lord has a 9-cell battery. Either way that's great battery life for a G50VT-A2. My A2 only gives me about 1 -1 1/2 hours MAX.

 

For those of you getting less than 1.5 hours on your G50 notebooks, try and calibrate your battery first. Also the screen is know consume the most power, so try and decrease the brightness to the minimum. Disabling all uncessary hardware and features can help preserve battery life as well. eg. disable hard drive index search, bluetooth, the fancy side lights etc.

 

I have gotten 2 hours out of my A1 with the stock 6 cell doing wifi websurfing several times. I have disabled indexing and used the stock Battery Saving power profile. Oh yeah, I also turned off as many LEDs as I could. And strangely enough, RAID 0 has no measurable effect on battery life on light usage.

 

I have a 6-cell battery, though to be fair I've never got a full 3 hours, just somewhere in the 2-3 range (rarely over 2.5).

That's only when it's being used for note taking in lectures, with the brightness turned down pretty low, and the LCD off when I'm not using it (Fn+F7 to toggle it on/off).

I think that switching off Wifi can buy you a few extra mins as well, not sure about BlueTooth. Obviously if you watch movies or play games, you'll use up battery much faster.

Would love to work out how to turn off ALL the LEDs - they irritate me because I'm sure the lecturers hate looking at the class and seeing bright blue lights sticking out.

 

I have an G50VT-B1 and via direct console I was able to disable all of the blue leds on the lid. I forget what mode they call this but I would imagine you can do the same on your A2.

 

I got 3 hours by turning the screen to absolute minimum brightness and disabling every single redundant device (card reader, webcam, etc.), lol. Clutch is working on disabling the lighting for the ROG logo and the horizontal bar.

For real? Absolutely every single LED? That sounds pretty exciting.

 

Hello all,

Even though, this my first time posting here, I've been reading this forum more than a year. I've bought my Dell Vostro 1500 equipped with 1.4Ghz and 8400M GS (OC'ed 650|1300|542 ) by reading the forums.


Anyways, this what my brother (Electrical Engineer) told me regarding the Li-on's battery life span:

-If you can, try not to drain the battery below 40%; though this is arguable.
-Don't leave your laptop in a car on a hot day as it will slowly destroy your battery. Typically, you don't want to go over 100F.

Just for an experiment, you can try the following method:
-Wrap your battery or put in a ziplock bag and put in a freezer and leave it there overnight. Make sure water doesn't get in. Once you'll take it out of the freezer, let it cool down first then plug it back to your laptop and see if it worked. This technique is known to boost back batteries energy hold. I don't have anything to back it up though.


Best Regards, Leonid