3 Cell Battery lasts for only 1:50 hours?

I got my Acer aspire one about 2 months ago,
I didn't really check the battery life time back then, but now, after reading online about a 6 Cell battery it seems like I should get at least 2 hours with the 3 Cell one.

Anyone got any idea why is this happening?
And will the 6 Cell battery give me a 5 hours working time or ~3 ?

Thanks ahead.

 

Battery life is somewhat subjective and is influenced by many factors:

1. Screen backlight brightness
2. SSD or HDD, if HDD then level of disk activity
3. WiFi activity
4. CPU load

If you have BIOS v3301 or later and a certain type of LCD panel then you may not be able to turn the backlight down as far as you would like.
If you are doing something fairly intensive such as streaming video over WiFi then I would certainly expect less than 2 hours use from a 3-cell.

On an A110 with 8GB SSD with the backlight turned down and light web browsing over WiFi I would expect almost 2 and a half hours out of my 3-cell.
On an A150 with 160GB HD and similar usage patterns I would expect 2 to 2 and a quarter hours out of the 3-cell.
With a 4400mAH 6-cell on the A150 I get almost 5 hours.
With an 5200mAH 6-cell on an A150 I would expect over 6 hours use.

If you have Windows XP then Notebook Battery Info or PC Wizard 2008 will tell you the wear level of the battery, i.e. is your battery capable of storing anything like its full designed capacity or is it starting to wear out.

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm using the 160GB HDD model.
The backlight of the LCD only goes to a certian level when pressing the FN key with the Left Arrow.
I could certinly handle a darker screen since its still really bright even when set to darkest.

Could a bios update allow me to set the screen to even less brighter than now?

And another not-so-related-question :
I got a leather ( Its not real leather ) case with my AAO, I was wondering if the AAO with a 6 Cell battery could fit in there as well as the 3 Cell battery does.

Thanks.

 

If your BIOS is v3301 or higher then try a downgrade to v3114. If you do have access to less bright backlight levels after doing this then be aware that you may experience some backlight flickering (noticeably when on battery power and the hard disk is accessed).

It was discovered that certain types of LCD panel flickered on lower backlight settings, so Acer issued a revised BIOS that "fixed" the problem by increasing the brightness of the four lower backlight settings if the suspect panel type is detected. Other panel types are supposed to be allowed to continue to use the original lower backlight settings.

Out of 5 AA1s that have passed through my hands, all have been fitted with the suspect panel type (AUO11C2), but only one has actually suffered from flicker. I have sent this one back for replacement, so it will be interesting to see what happens with #6. I use BIOS v3114 so that I can have the lower backlight settings.

The 6-cell does not fit quite as well as the 3-cell in the standard issue vinyl slip case, but it's not as if the battery is left exposed.

I have one of each of these neoprene "sleeping bags". The 9" case is a very snug fit, the 10" is a little easier to fit and remove. Both are absolute bargains:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15379

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.14660

 

How can I check my BIOS version?

BTW : Wish I could buy any of these "sleeping bags" but I live in Israel, so its a bit hard for me to get one of those.
Thanks anyway!