6 cell battery dies fast

hey everyone I just bought a AAO with a 6 cell battery and it seems to drain really fast. Like immediately after unplugging the ac adapter, and I browse the web for like 15ish minutes the battery goes down to 80% and says i have like 4 hours left. Is this normal? I've never owned a laptop before, this is my first so I didn't know if just browsing the web drains the battery that fast. Just want to make sure nothing is wrong with it hehe

 

i was also wondering if the longevity of my battery decreases if I use my AAO while its plugged into the AC adapter. Like even though its plugged into an outlet, does that affect my battery at all? like decrease the life span or anything? i'm running XP if that helps any

 

Kram, you will find in the documentation a reference to the fact that the battery requires several charge/discharge cycles before it can deliver full power. When brand new it has some sort of partial charge which won't last long. This applies to most battery types. So charge it, unplug and discharge it, then charge it again, etc. If it still refuses to work properly after two or three cycles it is defective. Mine (new two days ago) gave me six hours after I charged it up for the first time. I turned off all the power saving stuff and just let it go until it died and hibernated.

Plugged into AC or not won't hurt the battery. If you leave it plugged in it will charge, if necessary, while you use the PC. And it should be designed to not overcharge even if you leave it plugged in for days on end. But the type of use can make some difference to how long the battery will last. Intensive CPU usage and hard drive use (e.g. severe number crunching such as encoding or playing video) will use more power, although I don't know how noticeable that might be. You can set your power options to save battery power (such as turning off the screen and disks after a few minutes of idle time) if you want, although the defaults seem reasonable.

 

thanks goosgog for the info! I tried searching for stuff on here but I didn't know how exactly to phrase it and it didnt come up with anything :| I think i understand what you are saying. so when you say "discharge" you mean just let the computer run until its dead? Then charge it completely, then discharge again?

 

Yep. Use it until it gives up...then plug it back in...repeat.

 

When you say several charge/discharge cycles, what it the optimal number? I just received a 9 cell and want to make sure I get he best out of it.

 

I believe the battery meter and time left is just Windows guesstimation of battery life left, based on what you're doing then and various settings. So it may be off, I noticed similar variances on mine. One minute It would 3 hours left @ 85% , then it would say 4 hours left @ 83%.

My netbook is only 3 days old, so I haven't had enough fully charged,discharged cycles yet either.

 

Kram et al, yes just run on the battery until the computer shuts down automatically. Recharge and do it again, and again. It may take 3 or more full discharges to condition the battery. You have nothing to lose in any case, because if the battery is defective it has to go back to Acer and you have a year to do it.

As someone else mentioned, the time remaining indicator is just a guess. Like when you decide to backup all your photos or videos and Windoze says it will take 15 minutes. It is just a prediction based on the size of the files it has copied so far and can change.