W3v poor battery life, less than 2 hours.

Ever since i upgraded my w3v with additional 512mb 533mhz kingston ram, and did a disk recovery days later after encoutering spyware in my laptop. My battery life used to be avg 3 hours, but now my uptime with battery hits only 1 hour 30 mins on average. I'm using NHC and P4G. I tried disabling P4G and ATI's powerplay mode and so on, but battery life still the same, 1 hour 30 mins average.. please advice.

NHC settings on battery:
Clock: 800mhz (6x)
votage: 0.700v
ATI core: 54mhz
ATI memory: 47.25mhz

Screen brightness: 2/5 brightness.
Enabled harddisk spindown.

I've heard people using it for average 4 hours. My battery wear level is 40%..

NHC stats my battery:
voltage 16436mV
Capacity 40730mWh
Full capacity: 40730mWh
Manufactuer: Asus
Wear level 40%.

Does battery recalibration help? i know how to activate it in BIOs, but is there a full correct guide to battery recalibration? Please advice need help very badly..

 

First things first, I would remove the Ram u installed and re-test the battery life, it could be bad ram. Second, a re-install of windows is pretty drastic for spyware, there are many good programs, spybot, adware, even the windows anti-spyware program that can remove pretty much all of it. I would also perhaps try re-installing from the recovery partition, and testing battery life on a clean system before you add any extra power managment programs...its quite possible that maybe your just missing a driver or the that the re-install wasnt prefect or perhaps there is a conflict somewhere. If your battery was fine say 1 week ago then its unlikely to be the problem, and I would be rushing into recalibration....sounds more like software issues to me.
good luck
a

 

Umm after this new lead i found out, i can rule out software conflicts. After i did battery calibration in BIOs afew times, NHC battery section shows:
Voltage: 16525mV
Capacity: 33152
Full Capacity: 33152
Wear level: 51%.

What should i do? i tried recalibrating... but it seems its making my battery worst!! it maybe in correct step of recalibrating or something?

 

My W3A's 8 cell battery is reported by Mobilemeter as:

Design capacity 68080 mWh
Fully charged capacity 57084 mWh
wear level 16% (after 8 months)

The 51% wear level of your battery with remaining capacity of less than half the original amount explains why your battery running time is now so low.

I would not expect the battery calibration to cause wear to your battery. The calibration is to work out the full capacity so that Windows reports a reasonably accurate capacity and time remaining. Without the calibration you will suddenly discover that your computer runs out of power when you thought there is substantial time remaining.

Time to get a replacement under warranty?

John

 

Preety interesting statistic,
You took average 8 months for the battery to obtain a wear level of 16%...

And i took average hours to bring the wear level from 41% to 51%...

I'm preety lost, but replacing the battery using my warrenty will be my last resort.. Any other ways or methods?

 

If your battery is dying that fast then there probably isnt going to be anyother fixes, it could just be a bad battery. When the one in my ipod went a month ago, there was nothing I could do but replace it. If its under warranty why is it a last resort, thats what the warranty is for... Send the battery back, keep the laptop and run of mains for a few days.
a

 

mmm seems like theres no other choice but to replace my battery using my global warrenty, ummm once i use my global warrenty to get a replacement battery, am i still eligible to keep the global warrenty for future hardware problems?

 

Your warranty is good for as long as it says...2 years, I think it is?
So don't worry

 

Okay i just got off the phone from my country's asus global business service center and i'll be replacing the battery anytime soon from now, here are the warrenty time frames:

laptop hardware: 2 yrs
battery: ONLY 1 year.

And all he said was to bring down my laptop and battery... when i get my battery replaced, any idea on how to preserve my battery's wear level in future? should i unplug my battery with full power out of the laptop when running on AC for a long period of days?

currently the way i treat my battery:

i'll use it all the way up outdoors even though windows show critical level, using pass it all the way till the laptop cuts itself..

switch my laptop on for serveral days with AC plugged-in leaving battery full charge attached...

Yeah thats about it, i notice the more i calibrate the battery the higher the wear level... so battery calibration harms my battery.. =?

 

The way you use your battery is about as bad as it gets for longlivety. Deep discharges are bad, and hot storage at full charge (effectively leaving the battery in a notebook that is on 24/7) is bad as well. Also; a 'recalibrate' is doing a deep discharge which, again, is bad. Only mess with that BIOS option if the battery gauge in Windows is misrepresenting the actual charge. Usage patterns are the, by far, most determining factor in how fast a Li-ion battery will wear out.

 

Whereas full depletion is good for nickel based batteries, I believe that it is less good for lithium based batteries. You may therefore want to raise the low battery alarm settings by a few %. This means that you will never get to use the full battery capacity but if the battery performs to specification for longer then overall you are better off.

The battery calibration process must fully deplete the battery, so it is best used only occasionally.

The other thing that gradually wears out lithium batteries is the number of charge cycles. My W3 automatically tops itself up once the charge drops below 100%. Some notebooks (eg Fujitsu) wait until the battery has lost several % of charge before recharging. This reduces the number of charge cycles when running on mains power.

John

 

I've juz reached home and plugged in the new replaced battery, i hope this battery wont bug me for years to come, thus i've set my battery alarm under power options much higher... low battery alarm = 25%, critical alarm = 10%... and from now on once my battery is full charge i'll take it out of my w3v and leave it aside...

 

Let us know how the new one goes!
a

 

I might be wrong, I thought Lithium Ion battery are better off with mains plug in all the time. At least this is what all PDA manufacturer's recommendation.

When mains disconnected, used a few minutes and connected, you have effectively done one charge cycle. After maybe 1000 charge times, your battery is almost dead and needs a replacement.

 

I believe that anything below 20-30% counts as one charge cycle... correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Even when plugged in, most notebooks 'gently' cycle the battery over long periods of time. That's designed in..

It's storage at hot temperatures and full chrage that does it. Worst case, storage at 60C and 100% charge drops charge to 60% in 3 months:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

 

I almost always use my laptop on mains, and I always leave the battery in, and after 9 months of everday use (usually twice a day, several hours each time) I can still get more than 4 hours out of the battery when I do use it unplugged, and CHC reports my wear level as 0%.

So at least from my experience, yeah, it seems to be a good idea to leave the battery in no matter what.

 

Yes. For long life Lithium Ion battery, always leave battery in with mains plug in as soon as you switch on your notebook. A tricking charge does not count as one charge cycle. If my above thread confused anyone, my apology! Even though you are not using your notebook, its better to plug in mains to trickle charge your Li battery.

 

That's pretty awesome! I wonder what your battery wear would be like if you left your machine on 24/7...

 

If only I could know! I don't have Internet at home (it's free over all of downtown, so why pay $70/month?) so I'm always carrying the laptop back and forth. And for some reason, I just don't feel comfortable leaving it sitting alone in the coffee shop when I go home.....

 

LoL...leeching wireless connections are we? haha

 

Ha!

Actually, Athens has a city-sponsored free wifi cloud over the whole downtown. It's kind of slow and balky, though, so all the coffee shops and even some of the bars have their own free wifi. Not sure why bars thought it necessary -- I can't imagine suddenly needing to check my email during a punk-rock show, but it's nice to know I can if I need to....

 

Its been afew days since i replaced my battery, and now that i take a look closely visually, the battery they replaced isnt new at all as i saw very slight prying open effects on the gap at the cylinderical shape area... mmm but its cool. its not really visible unless u take a hard look.

The battery was at 1% wear level when i tested it at the asus center using NHC.... but its cool as long as the current capacity matched the normal battery capacity limit.