What to do about poor battery life on ASUS laptops?

Have a V6J.
Had the wireless turned off today.
Running Vista 32. I tried to watch a 30 minute AVI file.
After 22 minutes, the battery got down to 5% and shut down the computer.
Now this isn't normal coming from a fulling charged battery. What am I to do? Can I buy a new battery or will I need a new laptop that can handle a 30 minute avi.

 

How old is the notebook? The battery has a 1 year warranty, perhaps ask ASUS to see what they can do.

Has this been a reoccuring issue?

 

probably need a new battery

 

year old this past march

 

You will need a new battery. I suggest you also contact Asus regarding this and tell them.

Also if you haven't read through this thread and posts

 

Could be that BIOS issue, Try going into power options and disabling all the "Turn off at 5%, 1%" ect. Then when you battery gets to 0% see if it continues to function, The firmware that reads the remaining battery life has been a bit buggy on some models. So Its possible that while the battery says its at 0% it might actually have 30% remaining, By disabling the option in Windows to turn it off at a certain percentage it will continue to run.

 

Also see this post http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1848487&postcount=25
on how to maximize the life of your (new) battery.

Edit: BTW check your wear I would say you are with 80% certainty sufferring from the abnormal wear issue.

 

It's plugged in now, says 74% and it stopped charging.

 

Try doing a battery calibration in the BIOS. MilestonePC.com posted the link to the article that details battery losing life fast.

 

Support told me that i WILL be forced to purchase a new battery for $120+ dollars due to being 2 months outside my year warranty

Is it normal to have to replace laptop batteries after a year? The last 2 laptops I've owned I've gone well over 2 years with those batteries.

Makes me wonder why I even bought an ASUS laptop in the first place. Very poor support from the company, VERY poor! Those looking to buy asus, i would steer clear of them.

 

Batteries from all manufacturers only carry a 12 month warranty, so support is only following the rules. Unfortunately, the batch of batteries from the V6j series have been known to be wonky - many members have gotten replacements.

 

Yep.

Even less than one year for some (6m for Zepto, for instance).

I would buy a new battery and be *very* careful with the new one, following the instructions that I linked in my previous post.

 

Welcome to my world.

Some people on here don't want you to complain about ASUS, but I'll do.
Most of the people buying the higher end ASUS notebooks expect to get quality.

No excuses, batteries should be of quality as well. I used to have 3 hrs of battery life and after 5 months I only have 1 hr left. Tried everything suggested, but what now?

I'm living abroad and my notebook has pick up & return warranty for NL, but carry in outside the Netherlands.
Could someone explain me whether you have to hand in your notebook for a battery replacement or will they just send you a replacement battery?

Thanks.

 

Couldn't agree more... but there's nothing we can do about this, I think many of us have tried raising this problem with ASUS; it didn't work.

Change the battery, never discharge past 30%...

You can discuss it over the phone. If you explain that it's only a battery problem they will probably send a new battery.

You should have received with the notebook a nicely colored paper card with numbers to call for service, find the one in the country nearest to you. I have that card so if you don't have it just let me know your country and I'll tell you the phone number. Or search it on their website, it should be there.

But I would like you to call Asus NL nevertheless when you're back home and explain that this recurring battery wear issue is happening with the V1J as well I have talked to pretty much all of them at Asus NL notebook service about this battery issue, sent about a dozen emails with detailed descriptions and possible steps to take to resolve the issue, but I have not managed anything... The guys didn't want to believe me and they couldn't understand why I wouldn't swap my V6 for the V1.

 

Unfortunately, ASUS doesn't manufacture the batteries, but uses other brands for it. In this case, it seems there was a large batch which was faulty, and because they only had one supplier for the v1 and v6 battery, they couldn't change orders without having a large stockpile, which resulted in the large amounts of batteries.

 

Any suggestions on where to buy a battery?
Is ASUS the only website I can order it from? Really don't want to give them any more of my money if I don't have to.

 

...Bump...

 

Try either of these resellers: BTOTech.com or PROPortable.com

Batteries are expensive - you're probably not looking at less than $100 no matter where you get one