tp x41 graphics performance/battery problem?

Hello,

I noticed that I have some strange problem with 3d performance. I know gma900 is not a real graphics card, but it just works ridiculously slow. Basicly when I go to dxdiag, and do test direct 3d, it barely renders the turning-around cube!
There must be something wrong with this. I have never before tried 3d acceleration on my x41, so I dont know if its recent issue or not. I'm just suprised that this thing cannot render a simple 3d cube.

Has anyone heard about similliar issues?

The other thing is battery life. It seems to have decreased recently. And I allways fully-charge and then fully discharge the battery. Around 3 to 5 times a day. It used to work long long long... now the lifespan is really short (I'm using the 8cell battery).... Can I somehow restore the at least similiar lifespan to the original one? My Battery Manager says the designed capacity is 64Wh and the current max capacity is 44... thats bad, and it wasnt like that... Oh and I have this tp for 7months...

I dont know why but I suddenly have lots of strange issues...

If anyone knows how to address this problems, please let me know.

 

haha you made a fair share of mistakes.

for the gpu, try updating the driver by getting it from intel.com, sometimes ibm prevents you from updating the driver so your only option is to uninstall the IBM driver and install the intel driver. if that doesn't work, then the OS on your computer may be defective and the easiest way is to make a clean install of windows. gma900 has plenty of hp to render the cube.

for the battery, don't fully recharge and discharge, this is VERY harmful to lithium ions. the technique you mentioned works well for NiCad and NiMH types because the memory effect and battery chemistry. Laptop batteries haven't use those for a long time due to their poor charge retension and density. To maintain a long battery life for lithium ions, never fully charge or discharge the battery. Use battery manager and tell it to stop charging at 75% and start charging at 50%. The optimal capacity for LiIon batteries is about 40%. There is no way to reverse the charge loss for your battery. You can only replace it with a new one if you want the full capacity.

 

the problem with gpu is more serious... ive checked it on either windows and linux (with X.org 7 thres native support for gma900). On windows it at least "work" but on linux, it "renders" graphics, but there are huge errors (on various linux distros, compiled or installed from binaries...). On windows it just works ridiculously slow. I also tried Xgl - works fine, but it has slow moments.
I just see that somethings wrong.

About the battery... What can I do? I just work on the battery for most of the time. This is portable laptop, so I rarely have it on cable. I just use wifi and I'm happy with the mobility...

 

have you tested it on multiple windows installations? what do you mean by errors? please clarify, do you mean artifacts? starting errors? or something else? the symptoms you're describing are very general and could be attributed to a number of things.

For the battery, there is nothing you can do, but don't discharge it below 10% if you can. <10% is where the cells start to rapidly degrade. Full charge isn't so much of a problem.