w3v battery life took a nosedive...

hey guys

so im used to getting around 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hrs off of a full battery charge

in the past week or two suddenly the battery life took a complete nosedive

edit : a full charge is usually about an hr right now

as of this moment it's showing 25 mins left with 79% battery life...

im no expert but tht seems... off?

i haven't necc. done anything to it... though sometimes i do leave it plugged in for extended periods of time... but with lith-ion batteries that's not a problem right?

desperate cry for help!

or at least are there any applications or tricks i can try/use to boost or at least find out what may be wrong?

thanks all!

 

maybe check and see if there is a battery calibration tool in the bios? I know there is one in my w3j so I would assume you would have it too. Give that a shot and see what happens.
Dan

 

i just checked mobilemeter and it says the battery wear is at 83%...

for a computer that's about 1 yr old... is that not kinda... sucky (for lack of a better term)?

 

it is...calibrated yet though?

 

yeah... like gusto said.. try draining the battery out, and then do battery calibration from BIOS.. should take couple hours, maybe leave it running at night.

 

thanks guys i'll try that

still though... and i don't expect this to be answered...

why all of a sudden!?

 

I've have the S5Ne for nearly 2.5 years now, mobilemeter says 9% on the 3-cell and 7% on the 9-cell battery. Not sure why your batteries are giving out already. Hope it works out!

 

Do you calibrate often?

 

nvm about tht


so i just recalibrated and mo-meter is showing the battery wear at 81%...

38mins at 92% remaining (the % drops rather rapidly)

i guess that means its time for a new battery right?

 

Unfortunately... looks like it ....

 

Well your battery should have a 1 year waranty on it. For me I'd say anything over 25% in a year should be classed as a battery failure, but i cant speak for others charging habbits.

I'd seriously get in touch with your dealer or asus direct however you choose and see what can be done.... something is seriously wrong there if it happened all of a sudden.


Insane

 

CHC is telling me that there is 69% battery wear after 1 year 2 months. I know, I don't like this at all. I talked to Asus and they don't do anything at all after 1 year. No discount, no love.

This one year battery thing is planned obsolescence, in my opinion. I have left mine plugged in for extended periods of time and I thought it didn't matter with a lithium ion, but apparently that's bad wrong. Anyone confirm/deny that?

Thanks!

 

Lithium Ion degredation is a function of temperature and charge. Optimum storage is in a cool place at 40% charge, any higher storage level or temperature then that can cause excessive wear.

"Excessive" being maybe ~40% batter wear in a year if stored at 100% and 40C, from what I've read. This Z33Ae is my first laptop so I have no idea if that's 'normal.' I bought my sister a used Thinkpad with two batteries, which report their manufacture and first use dates in the Thinkpad battery utility (nice feature). They were fist used in 2002 and 2003 and have ~40% and 30% wear, respectivly.

70-80% after a year is defective, IMHO. I am at 6% on my 9-cell and 5% on my 3-cell after about 6 months of use, mixed use on battery and plugged in. They have been steady for a while now at those levels, so I'm happy.

My understanding is that to 'update' the batteries wear level completely, a relativly low level of charge has to be attained. All the 'calibration' function does is run the battery down with no Windows automatic shutdowns getting in the way to make sure this happens. All percentages in Windows can then be correctly reported as percent of the current max capacity of the battery. Wear level is the reduction in the current max capacity from the design capacity.

Some batteries seem to be overdesign to begin with with the expectation that they will level off at a reasonable wea

 

Jumper...thanks for your thorough explanation. I agree, I think my battery and the battery of the original poster were defective. I actually was able to get a replacement and now am very happy. My 2nd battery did not show that kind of wear. I'm going to take a friend's recommendation and not run this one with the power supply plugged in unless I have the battery out.

These things are too expensive to not treat them like babies! I don't understand why they don't have circuitry to take care of the battery no matter what conditions it encounters.

 

I had the same problem with my w3v. I could normally get 3:30 hrs on a full charge and then all of a sudden it dropped down to just 1:30 hours. I brought my laptop into an asus repair center and they gave me a new battery and it works fine now. I thought it was kinda wierd at the time too, that all of a sudden my battery wear would go from less than 10% to 30%+ in a matter of days.

 

unfortunately i'm just barely past the 1 yr mark so no dice for me... and i'm nowhere close to an asus repair center...

boo...

 

My laptop is over 4-5 years old..and only has 50% battery wear. That is some catastrophic battery wear! What the hell happened?

 

well i do a lot of work with autocad/viz/photoshop/indesign and a multitude of other intensive programs... i'd say the majority of my time is spent using those programs... and thus i usually like to keep the w3v plugged in...

it does get kinda hot... but i just assumed it came with the territory since it's a small machine but it CAN run all these (sometimes together)

other than that i have no clue... as ray5000 said it was a pretty sudden drop

 

I really don't think you've done anything wrong..

Too bad you're out of warranty..

 

my battery was at like 5%-10% a month ago. I leave my battery unplugged from the computer because for some odd reason I figure I'd keep it from over charging. Last week I plugged up the battery and it went from 76% battery life to 7% in about 2 minutes. Then I noticed the wear to be at 36%, I did a full drain from bios and the wear level was about 5% higher. Today I pluged it up again the wear is at 96%. I called asus, its out of warranty

 

Even after reaching 100% charge, does the charge light remain on? Have you recently updated your ATK0100 ACPI Utility drivers?

 

I have he same experience as the thread poster. I got my Asus w3V in August 2005 and the battery is completely useless now. It must have started getting really bad around the 15 month mark. I cant even unplug the laptop anymore as it goes off instantly. I found that using Calibration only made things worse. Asus make good machines but the batteries are really poor in my opinion.

 

wow back from the dead

so ya since i last posted here i've been ansty in trying to see how long i can "actually" go being unplugged (disregarding the xx percentage the comp says i have left). can go about 25mins surprisingly... still blows tho.

surprisingly i've been able to survive with keeping it plugged in all the time.

question though. i've held off on buying a replacement battery since i've been contemplating a new laptop but choices out there don't seem to be appealing... i happen to be relatively close to fremont/ca at the moment... i would jump the gun and get it but seeing as the w3v is no longer in production... would it mean that what remaining batteries asus has on hand have been manufactured say 1 yr ago (to make it easy)... any issues that come about a battery that has been sitting around for 1 yr?

 

If you're around Asus, go to their service center and talk to Mila Chao (sp?) if she's still there. She was helpful in getting me a new battery. I was a little over the 1 year mark, but it's worth a try anyway. I kind of just played the dumb and helpless. She complained but helped me out. Sometimes the dumb wheel gets greased.