Battery Life Suddenly Diminishing ....

When I bought my Acer Aspire One 532 a few weeks ago and fully chrged it for the first time I got about 8 hours out of the battery. This has been fairly consistent until today. I left it on charge overnight as usual, and this morning it said that the battery was 100% but that only 5 hours was available. And as it turned out the battery gave out after about 5 hours use. This is way below the capacity advertised and way below spec. So what's going on? I would have thought that a brand new battery might have lasted within spec. for a tad longer than two weeks.

CJB.

 

My Acer Aspire One 532 has a 6-cell battery. In the first two weeks when fully charged it usually said about 8 hours from a charge at 98%. Now after about 8 weeks of ownership the battery quickly goes down.

I timed my online session yesterday and after 4 hours it was down to 10% with 30 minutes left. Then after 15 minutes it went into hibernation.

This means that I am now getting about 5 hours (or less) for a full charge - far less than the 8 hours I was told would be the norm. - and which was an important selling point for me.

At this rate of deterioration I am going to be lucky to get 4 hours (or less) out of a full charge.

CJB.

P.S. I am assuming that the cells do not suffer from the 'memory effect' that used to bedevil rechargeable batteries, in that to retain their full capacity they have to be fully discharged before recharging?

 

Could it be a bug in Win 7 that is reporting decreased battery life? I found this thread:

http://finance.google.com/group/google. ... rums&pli=1

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:09:57 -0800 (PST)
Local: Mon, Feb 15 2010 7:09 am
Subject: Is the Windows 7 bug killing your laptop battery?
By Gareth Halfacree of www.bit-tech.net.

An issue with ACPI power management - reported to Microsoft back in June - is being blamed for permanently damaging users' laptop batteries.

While Windows 7 has brought many advantages to users of Microsoft's operating systems, extended battery life may not be amongst them - at least according to some users claiming to be affected by a battery-
biting bug.

As reported over on PhysOrg.com - via Engadget - enough users have now complained of serious battery life issues with the latest consumer iteration of Windows that Microsoft has opened an investigation into the reports.

According to threads on Microsoft's TechNet forums, the issue appears to be related to Windows 7's inability to recognise certain battery types and capacities - with the result that users are receiving error messages telling them to "consider replacing your battery" despite there being nothing physically wrong with the device.

Rather more worrying is reports that other users are experiencing a real drop in battery life, rather than just an annoying but ultimately ignorable error message: TechNet poster Guy Gordon reports that the battery in his HP 6810b laptop used to get over two hours of life from a single charge under Windows XP, which dropped to 45 minutes immediately after installing Windows 7 - and has now tailed off to a mere five minutes before the system forcibly shuts down.

Microsoft is continuing to treat the issue as a purely software problem - with Windows failing to correctly determine the remaining charge, the system may well shut down prematurely even when there is power left in the battery. More seriously, Windows will struggle to determine when the laptop battery has had enough mains power to be fully charged - something which should be resolved by charging the laptop while it's powered off, rather than with Windows running.

However, Technet users are reporting that the drop in capacity is permanent - with other operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux, reporting massively reduced battery capacity once Windows 7 had been running for a while.

The issue, however, has been ongoing since at least June of last year, and despite workarounds being offered - ranging from disabling the ACPI battery support and using a third-party battery monitoring utility to ensuring that your BIOS is fully up to date - many users are still affected by it. So far, Microsoft appears unable to offer a solution - and is silent regarding numerous requests for replacement batteries from users bitten by the bug.

Any Windows 7 users who've noticed their battery life taking a massive nosedive, or is it a vocal minority who are experiencing an extremely rare bug? Should Microsoft be treating the issue more seriously?

 

Could it be a bug in Win 7 that is reporting decreased battery life? I found this thread:

http://finance.google.com/group/google. ... rums&pli=1

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:09:57 -0800 (PST)
Local: Mon, Feb 15 2010 7:09 am
Subject: Is the Windows 7 bug killing your laptop battery?
By Gareth Halfacree of http://www.bit-tech.net.

An issue with ACPI power management - reported to Microsoft back in June - is being blamed for permanently damaging users' laptop batteries.

While Windows 7 has brought many advantages to users of Microsoft's operating systems, extended battery life may not be amongst them - at least according to some users claiming to be affected by a battery-biting bug.

As reported over on PhysOrg.com - via Engadget - enough users have now complained of serious battery life issues with the latest consumer iteration of Windows that Microsoft has opened an investigation into the reports.

According to threads on Microsoft's TechNet forums, the issue appears to be related to Windows 7's inability to recognise certain battery types and capacities - with the result that users are receiving error messages telling them to "consider replacing your battery" despite there being nothing physically wrong with the device.

Rather more worrying is reports that other users are experiencing a real drop in battery life, rather than just an annoying but ultimately ignorable error message: TechNet poster Guy Gordon reports that the battery in his HP 6810b laptop used to get over two hours of life from a single charge under Windows XP, which dropped to 45 minutes immediately after installing Windows 7 - and has now tailed off to a mere five minutes before the system forcibly shuts down.

Microsoft is continuing to treat the issue as a purely software problem - with Windows failing to correctly determine the remaining charge, the system may well shut down prematurely even when there is power left in the battery. More seriously, Windows will struggle to determine when the laptop battery has had enough mains power to be fully charged - something which should be resolved by charging the laptop while it's powered off, rather than with Windows running.

However, Technet users are reporting that the drop in capacity is permanent - with other operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux, reporting massively reduced battery capacity once Windows 7 had been running for a while.

The issue, however, has been ongoing since at least June of last year, and despite workarounds being offered - ranging from disabling the ACPI battery support and using a third-party battery monitoring utility to ensuring that your BIOS is fully up to date - many users are still affected by it. So far, Microsoft appears unable to offer a solution - and is silent regarding numerous requests for replacement batteries from users bitten by the bug.

Any Windows 7 users who've noticed their battery life taking a massive nosedive, or is it a vocal minority who are experiencing an extremely rare bug? Should Microsoft be treating the issue more seriously?

 

I did have some really serious problems with my battery in my D250 under Win7. Battery life was indeed being reported incorrectly, sleep mode was being activated every 5 minutes, the battery was being reported as full, then completely empty within seconds, then back to full again, then to error mode.

What fixed it for me was a BIOS update from Acer. Now I'm more than happy with the battery performance in Win7.

I'm still using my 9 cell? i think, battery that I bought with my 150 over 2 years ago, and I still get at least 5 hours out of a full charge.

 

How do I get an update for the BIOS from Acer?

However I have also just cleaned out McAfee entirely. (And I've installed MS Security Essentials.)

The removal of McAfee also seems to have 'cured' various other issues like Media Player 12 crashing with a Server Execution error (apparently caused by IE8's dlls being incorrectly registered), and the issue with the BIOS clock settings continually losing time (or reverting back to the default date/time).

And the netbook now flies.

Many thanks to everyone - Chris B.

 

My battery life is now down to about 1 hour 30 mins after a full over night charge. So much for the 8 hours advertised.

 

Try the system restore option.