A few Envy 14 issue questions

Still deciding if I should keep the Envy 14, there are a couple of I guess minor issues...the battery life indicator never shows more than one hour and a few minutes even when fully charged. In reality it gets around 4 hours battery life but even after following HP's own instructions several times the battery life indicator has not changed. Then even though I have the Intel video card checked to run on the battery, every time I unplug from the AC it asks if I want to switch the video card to save power even when I'm already running Intel graphics plugged in. Then the fan seems to run constantly both plugged in and on battery power, it's not that loud but I'm just wondering if this is normal with the i5 580 and intel graphics.

Thanks for any input.

 

Download battery bar. It is much more accurate than windows for reading the battery but it even takes about two weeks to become accurate (it is based on past use). Be sure you read the entire battery life log thread amongst others. There is so much info available here at your finger tips. The switching when unplugged sounds normal. I can't comment for sure that mine does this but it is set to "ask to switch graphics when unplugged/plugged in" so it would make sense. Especially since this is a fairy new feature hp has implemented, our isn't going to be perfect. Good luck fixing these and future problems.

 

Thanks for the info. One more question, I know the Envy comes with a 2 year warranty but is that a send in warranty or do they send a tech to your home? I once had a problem with my Dell laptop and they sent a tech to my home the next day to repair it.

 

It's a "send in your laptop" warranty. no exceptions.

 

The Envy has built in battery estimation now? Is there any way people with older models can get this? I'm currently using batterybar but would much prefer windows estimation over it, or both really. Thanks!

 

Start>control panel>notification area icons
or
just go to the control panel and search "notification area icons"

 

Just realize that the windows bar estimate is incompatible w/ the envy and will never display even a close approximation.

 

Windows shows the battery symbol. It just never shows an estimate.

 

The issue is a motherboard/bios issue where the charge formula is incorrect.


Someone reported they fixed theirs by downgrading the bios but well, other people on the current bios don't have the issue and that guy never came back so *shrugs*

edit: basically what is happening is that the bios is reporting to windows that the battery is being drained at a very high rate (3-4 times higher than normal)

 

Yea..Just the battery symbol and no estimate. Anyone know how to get the estimate on there?

 

Use BatteryBar. Seriously. It's a lot better than what Windows has to offer.