W3J Battery Question...

I'm in the initial stages of tinkering away with my new W3J and had both batteries going (Main and Optical). Low and behold, while I was working on my network from my laptop trying to setup an ethernet wireless bridge, the laptop shutoff without warning in a tenth of a second. It was the same shutdown that you experience if you would have pulled the power plug with no battery in your laptop.
I rebooted, looked at the power levels of the batteries, and realized that the optical battery had discharged to ZERO and did not do a seamless power transfer to the main battery. I am kind of suprised at this. Am I missing something here? If that's the case, I'm less than impressed on that particular part of the laptop. Any opinions much appreciated.

On a last note, I will give my impression of the laptop when I get some free time to actually say something useful.

Thanks

 

I have two batterys in my z63a and it acts strange as well. like they both dont always charge when plugged in. windows reads the amount of time wrong. but the power is supposed to go from main to optical not optical to main. at least thats what i think. Im also not sure if the optical will charge if the laptop isnt shut off. or the main has to be charged first. I still havent figured it out.

 

is there a setting in windows power meter or bios that runs through configuring the optical battery? btw, where'd you guys get the optical battery at?

 

I bought it from Proportable with my lappie...good questions here. I thought I remembered another discussion on this, but a search that I ran yielded nada...

 

My laptop goes from the Optical battery and the only thing that happens is the LCD shuts off then you hit the fn-LCD button twice and it comes back on. BTW if your looking for a wife you can try some dateing websites.

 

I'm sure there are some people here with the Z70va in which they are also running the Modular battery and main battery and they could tell you what's going on.

But i do remember people stating things like the modular battery doesn't charge so easily like the main. and stuff like that.

One of the things that interested me the most now, is the modular battery which would give me roughly an extra hour, but now that i think more about it, it seems it MAY be more of a nuissance? I dunno, i hope not. =\

We would need to investigate this for a little while.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I don't know what it is, but windows doesn't recognize any Asus optical bay battery - correctly. It sees it, but the battery meters seem to get screwy.

The second battery is used first and then it will switch over to the main battery... starting out with two fully charged batteries is important though....If you put the second battery in and it's not charged or it's low...... sometimes weird things will happen..... so I'm not sure what the case is in this situation, but I'd first charge both batteries while the system is off..... and then go from there.

 

I have a Z70Va with both batteries. The optical drains first down to 5% and then it switches over to the main battery. Not sure why yours didn't switch, mine has always been seamless. If the problem repeats itself there might be something defective with your notebook.

Sometimes I've had weirdness in charging, where the notebook charges the main battery normally, and then takes a while before it starts to charge the secondary battery. If I want it to charge immediately, I just take out the main battery and wait for it to start charging the secondary and then put the main battery back in.

From what I understand, the screwy battery life meter in Windows and other programs (NHC, mobilemeter, etc) is caused by the difference in battery voltages - the main battery is 14.8V whereas the secondary battery is 11.1V. This also means the rate of discharge reported by these programs to be off. The Dell's with modular batteries I've used have both batteries run at 11.1V and everything is normal with these.

 

ahhh ic interesting thanks lazybum131.

My friend also has an Z70va and he finds it to be perfect with the Main and Modular battery.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I'll try and charge the optical battery without the main in, then replace the main and let it charge down again and see what happens. I thought there might be something in the bios that would affect that, but couldn't find it. We'll see...

Also, it's not a real picture of me LOL. If it was, I wouldn't fit in the cockpit of my airplane, hell, not even the door! LOL

 

your picture is almost pornographic.....that guy has bigger breasts than most women x_x

 

actually im very interested in this because i too am going to order a w3j soon and i was going to buy a modular battery but now i am not so sure. Can someone help us?

 

Actually the thumbnail chosen by TeflonMan didn't affect any of you from offering insights etc. I appreciate a forum that wants to help others first.

 

necknight, don't hesistate to buy the W3J, one of the reasons why i would buy it, is because it is one ofthe most portable units ever and it hasa modular battery for extending your batterylife

Once you get it you may have to play around with both batteries so that you can form some solution to how to make both work 100% so that you have no troubles in the future.

Looking at Teflon's example is good start and Proportables' post on how to make sure your modular battery works seamlessly.

Who cares if Windows can't tell if the modular bay is there or not, you should have already measured the estimated batterylife under certain conditions and that would give you an idea when you use it for school or raod trips or flight.

Thanks,

MysticGolem