cf-ax3 why does builtin battery gets drained before removable battery ??

( there s a nice thread for the ax2/ax3 here http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/panasonic-cf-ax2.690396/ but it seems to be closed so I open a new one here)

just bought a cf-ax3 (windows 10) off ebay and I am wondering : why does the builtin battery ( #2 ) gets drained before the removable battery ( #1 ) ???
(it s not logical as when the builtin battery is discharged I can no longer change the removable battery "on the fly")

thanks folks for your help !!

(ps : also noticed a wiki for the AX3 (and other panasonic laptops) here : https://panasonic.wikia.com/wiki/CF-AX3 )

 

update : I have updated the bios and Intel firmware (not sure what this intel firmware is ?) and now the draining behaviour seems good in windows for the time I ve been testing it ( I ve been using my AX3 more with Archlinux Anarchy XFCE , it seems to drain battery #1 most of the time but sometimes it temporarily drains battery #2 for a very short time and then the battery life indicator becomes a mess ... I then need to click on the battery icon to get a better idea of what battery life is left on the 2 batteries ...)

 

update2 : I realized that my battery #1 is not always recharging when it should so there might be some kind of bad electrical contact issue (sorry for my bad english) that may explain my problems ...

 

Just to let you know someone is reading your posts.

 

cf-ax3 is something like multicolored unicorn )

 

yeah it s a nice machine with its nice touchscreen IPS display and its ssd makes it kind of fast ... I got the 8GB/256GB version for quite cheap on ebay (219E+20E shipping - it s in OK condition but not perfect) ...

the issues are that the battery life doesn t seem as good as advertised (maybe 5-6 hours under linux/windows ... maybe my windows setup is missing sthg ... my battery capacities are about 80% from originals, the issue being that a battery replacement is kind of expensive : about 70-80$ on aliexpress) and sometimes the fan is a little bit noisy (less on linux where there are less processes being fired randomly in the background)

but I saved money by buying it instead of an RZ4 (I don t know if the battery life on the RZ4 is as good as advertised (14H) ? - I've also just bought an old N10 and its battery life is good, the battery indicator says 12hours sometimes and I think it s probably more than 7 hours IRL ...)

 

I guess you have Panasonic Power plan extension utility (Windows) app installed. There is a switch between fast and slow charging (I presume slow = also old Eco mode, when battery is being charged to 80% max) and also a switch between fast and slow fan rotation speed (affects CPU speed too).
And battery recalibration (F9 key during post) is recommended every ~6 months.

 

wow awesome tips, thank you @BaRRmaley !!

I installed Panasonic Power plan extension utility and selected the Panasonic Power Saving mode
Also slowed down the fan
(I guess the ebay seller just made a quick windows install and he probably didn t know about this utility - neither do I, I must confess ... )
I didn t select the ECO mode as maybe I ll need my batteries at full capacity ...

I ll try to recalibrate the batteries one of these nights as it says it takes about 4 hours ...

PS : under Windows the touchscreen doesn t seem to be as responsive as under Linux when scrolling ... sometimes I feel some kind of slowdown when "touch-scrolling" but it seems to be fine under linux ...

PS2 : also modifying the extended settings from the Panasonic Power plan extension utility menu doesn t bring up any window

 

nothing interesting there

Try to install Panasonic Dashboard also and check if there is a switch between touch and touch water modes.

 

unfortunately it didn t install correctly on my AX3EDEKMP (self registration error due to TileCmn.dll ) ... (there s only a Windows 7 version for my model ...)

 

I never believe what they say anyways. It's like a car , they say it gets 30 miles per gallon but if you are lucky it gets 20 .

It does not surprise me one bit. A lot of sellers know nothing about Toughbooks. They think they are just like any other laptop but we know different.

 

I ve done it and the battery life as indicated by the windows indicator seems to be better (I ve seen 7h46 at the beginning and 9h29 now with low screen light) ... hopefully it has calibrated the 2 batteries as only the battery #2 indicator was green this morning (but the bios calibration tool did see both batteries before I started it ...)

 

Install Panasonic PC information viewer, there is battery health info. Or something like Batterycare. You'll get exact battery wear in %

 

I tried to install PC information viewer but again I had a self registration error (PcInfoCo.dll not found - translated from french ). I installed BatteryBar : 15% wear on battery #1 & 20% on #2 .

by the way I once reached 12h05 battery life (as estimated by the windows battery indicator) when I closed google chrome ...