29 replies to this topic

[vinaycm]

Want to share an intresting event:

I own a four year old Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro V2020.. Due to the age & random usage patterns, the battery backup has dropped to arnd 5 minutes now (rather near dead!!!)..

Three days back i've installed windows 7 into it (just to see how windows 7 performs with low end hardware).. But i've to revert back within a day to good old windows xp due to the non availability of drivers for some hardware in the laptop.. But just as i installed windows xp back, the battery seems to be running like new.. I was a bit skeptical at first & tested out the actal battery backup.. The results i've got was pretty damn good.. 3.5 hours standby & 2.5 hours of heavy usage!!!

How come this be?? With the first windows xp, i cudnt get any better than 5min.. Now after windows 7, the same windows xp is giving many fold better backup.. I've drained out the battery some more times to see wether there is any drop in the backup.. Still now also iam getting arnd the same figures as mentioned above..

[vishalrao]

Apparently some batteries need to be drained completely to regain their life... then again some batteries near the end of their life exhibit such inconsistent results... keep checking for a few days to see if this lasts...

[vinaycm]

vishalrao said:

Apparently some batteries need to be drained completely to regain their life... then again some batteries near the end of their life exhibit such inconsistent results... keep checking for a few days to see if this lasts...

Yeah.. Iam still checking wether the results could be consistent.. So far so good..

[bhaskarvyas001]

Ain... Quite interesting...
Keep us informed...

[Sandy]

How is it doing now? My friends Acer notebooks batt died and I could ask him to try this :D

[axeman]

LOL, MS would charge higher now for Win7 - Laptop Battery Recovery edition. Good for you m8.

[raksrules]

I think Windows 7 will be the ultimate shot in the arm for M$

[gcbeldar]

Hey All,

Please suggest me best usage of Notebook to get max life of the battery.

1. Should Always use notebook with charger ?

2. Charging and discharging ?

[Rockfella]

Good for u mate, whatever works haha. Its been a recurring thing to hear good things about windows 7 now. HAIL 7.

[Switch]

Full charge and discharge would give your notebook a better battery vs constant charging.

Whats the latest stable build of the OS.

[amol_cool]

gcbeldar said:

Hey All,

Please suggest me best usage of Notebook to get max life of the battery.

1. Should Always use notebook with charger ?

2. Charging and discharging ?

If you use heavily (8-10 hours daily) it's better to use it with AC adaptor. But it is also essesntial that your battery goes the charging and discharging process completely at least twice in a month. You can use battery eater to drain your lappy's battery :P


This will give you longer batter life and higher backup times.

[nilsnaik]

Since you formatted your windows xp and re-installed it It could be possible that there were some unwanted processes which were taking up your CPU, Memory in your previous install and which got cleared after re-install. This could be only reason otherwise there could be no other reason.

[Switch]

But 5 mins vs 210 mins is insane.

[raksrules]

gcbeldar said:

Hey All,

Please suggest me best usage of Notebook to get max life of the battery.

1. Should Always use notebook with charger ?

2. Charging and discharging ?

If you are continuously using your laptop for several hours and that too at a single stationary position i suggest detach the battery from the laptop and use it only on AC Power.

Problems with this approach

1. You may have to shutdown / hibernate your laptop if you intend to take the lappy somewhere
2. If electricity plays spoilsport then your lappy will shut off immediately.

I use this approach if there is an overnight download scheduled.

[vinaycm]

nilsnaik said:

Since you formatted your windows xp and re-installed it It could be possible that there were some unwanted processes which were taking up your CPU, Memory in your previous install and which got cleared after re-install. This could be only reason otherwise there could be no other reason.

The first windows xp installation was clean.. No viruses or any power hogging apps were there..

[JAK]

Well in that case Microsoft can now justify the price of its Windows 7 OS..
no wonder MS charges a premium..
maybe its an easter egg....:rofl:

[jampack]

or maybe Windows 7 calibrated your battery or whatever tht thing is called?

[vinaycm]

jampack said:

or maybe Windows 7 calibrated your battery or whatever tht thing is called?

Iam still puzzled over how Win7 has done it.. If tht Windows7 installation had done something to the battery, its effects should have been reversed after switching back to WinXP & on a complete discharge cycle (i've tried out some 6 complete discharge cycles till now), it should have been reverted to the old '5min' backup.. But iam still getting tht good battery life as given by Win7..

[Party Monger]

The drivers for the battery management might hav been improper or problematic in xp, for your make of battery..
While there might have been charge in the battery, the os would hav reported less or shut down because of it..

did you every try any other OS except xp?


The reason why XP now gives better battery is because you must hav installed the latest xp release, or atleast relatively newer release..

[amol_cool]

raksrules said:

If you are continuously using your laptop for several hours and that too at a single stationary position i suggest detach the battery from the laptop and use it only on AC Power.

Problems with this approach

1. You may have to shutdown / hibernate your laptop if you intend to take the lappy somewhere
2. If electricity plays spoilsport then your lappy will shut off immediately.

I use this approach if there is an overnight download scheduled.

I won't recommend that. If you tend to do some stuff that needs constant power and might get corrupted otherwise, then it's a hell of a problem! :) Also, even if the battery is there, it's by default disabled when the charging is full. So it's safe to use it even all day long.