Asus UL30VT FAQ / Official Owners Lounge redux

I'll tell you why that is, because I read the entire old thread back to back over the course of a few days so I have a good overall picture. For the last 150 pages or so it was just an endless stream of the same questions (how do I install Windows, what's the difference between the X1/A1 etc.), and countless posts by you about how great your 8GB RAM and your SSD is.

Then it got really interesting when Itaru showed up, telling us how to hack and install the latest nVidia drivers. But after a couple of days you told him to go take that into a different thread and he left. That's when the UL30VT thread just died and went back to the occasional repeat question.

I started this FAQ thread hoping to save potential owners from falling into the same trap as I did, and I think it's working because there's a lot fewer repeat questions. I would also like to add a question about "What kind of SSD should I get" just to limit those types of questions too, because that has even less to do with the UL30VT than nVidia drivers, and it's been done to death.

So here's your chance to contribute, tell us what kind of SSD you got and what you remember other users getting, and any other useful info.

/rant

 

By the way, for anyone curious about the Synaptics drivers, I think I found a way to mimic their behavior with the Elan driver: go to the Elan settings, and set the PalmTracking to Minimum. From what I can tell that basically sets the sensitivity of the trackpad to the max, and it definitely feels more responsive especially when you're touching it lightly. The two-finger scroll feels more immediate.

 

So a week ago I was having alot of problems with intermittent lagging. I roughly pinpointed the problem to some interactions with Word 2010 and other processes. But its fixed thanks to rexrzer who helped me tremendously.

After I had reformatted it and reinstalled W7HP64bit, the same problem occurred shortly after! very frustrating.

However I updated the BIOS and started using Office 07.

I haven't had a problem since. Well, except for one new one.

Is anyone else finding that the RHS palm rest creaks alot? Pressing on it and i can depress the top cover into the bottom cover. Also, it seems that there has been some sort of warping of the case in that the RH front leg is lifting off about 0.2mm, especially when I push the lid to the very back.

I'm just wondering whether, when the lid is fully back, whether the front sides lift off? the laptop can rock when i depress the RH front corner but not on the left. I was thinking that it LH side seems a little heavier as well.

I've sent it off to warranty, and they've agreed to change the top and bottom covers (a long process!) in 2 weeks.

Another question: How is every one trying to keep their battery lasting the longest. on most batteries i try to let it charge fully before running it empty, though i've been told that is a sure way to cut battery life.

Last question: where are the fans placed? is air sucked through the keyboard and blown out through the LH vent? or it sucked through the bottom vents near the front just behind the 2 speakers? the reason i ask, is that i plan to use the asus ul30vt in my soon to arrive zeroshock III while in transit to uni on the bus (its a bumpy ride :|). I am concerned of heating issues and the bumps damaging the hdd. I know its not ideal, but is it an ok idea?

thanks again guys!

 

Many or most people are having this palm rest issue. I hadn't noticed it until I started using it on a table. There's no problem with typing, but when I use the TouchPad and I rest my hand on the RHS edge, the palm rest flexes and the sharp edge of the black bottom shell gets exposed and presses against my hand. I was considering gluing those two parts, that should fix it but then what happens when I want to take it apart for some reason (e.g. to change keyboards)? It's definitely a common issue with the UL30VT.

I'd like to know if some people are actually getting this issue fixed by Asus, my guess is it's a design flaw and not a problem with certain units.

 

That sharp edge around the palm rest is the most annoying thing on my UL80Vt. Thanks to that sharp edge I had to adjust how I type so that my wrists don't rest on the sharp edge. It's probably the same thing on the UL50Vt so it's most likely a design issue for the entire ULxxVt line. I thought about sandpapering the sharp edge to smooth it out but couldn't bring myself to do it, so I opted to adjust my typing form instead. Maybe once I get sick of it enough and the notebook doesn't look so new anymore, I may do it.

The second most annoying thing is the lousy touchpad design with the surface blending in with the palm rest. Since the surface of the touchpad isn't sunken in and separated from the palm rest (like in most other notebooks with sane and usable design), I have to type carefully so that my palms don't accidentally brush on the touchpad surface and cause the typing cursor to jump to wherever the mouse cursor happens to be at. Fortunately I use a USB mouse and set the touchpad to disable automatically when the mouse is plugged in, so that takes care of that problem. Funny thing is that the mouse came with the notebook and has the Asus logo on it, so maybe Asus included it cause they realized the touchpad on the notebook totally sucks. Still during those times when it's not practical to plug my USB mouse in, that poorly and cheaply designed touchpad surface is just annoying.

Speaking of Elan touchpad, there's a newer version of the driver available which is v7.0.6.4. The Asus download page still only has up to v7.0.5.10. I'm using v7.0.6.4 now, and I honestly can't feel anything different with this latest version compared to the previous versions. Still no pinch zoom feature or anything, and the sensitivity setting is still as useless as ever when it comes to getting rid of accidental palm touches. If you're having problems with the Elan touchpad, it might be worth a try though. You can get it (and all the other previous versions) from ELANTECH Drivers

 

I dunno if this is the right place to ask this, but i got a ul30vt-a1 today and am charging the battery. THe question i have is now that it's past 95%, the light on the battery indicator is green, will the battery indicator light turn off once it's fully charged?

 

thanks for bringing it up belzebutt. interesting to hear that i am not alone. its not so much of a functional problem as it a major annoyance. i'm quite a light typer but as you type and make fast reaches for the further keys it creaks. it just seems as though the LHS is more solidly built than the rhs so much so that its lifting on the rhs. i just really dislike how its lifting off marginally one side leading irrevocably to rocking

i'm hoping that the new top/bottom 'set' will resolve this issue. i will report back when its fixed.

i'm concerned that taking out the motherboard, gpu, fans, pretty much the whole thing to change the case...that it somehow won't be as good as factory design. (eg. maybe they would have to reglue/resolder certain components again) hope its just a simple unscrew and replace.

i wasn't aware that changing the keyboard required the whole top faceplate to be taken off. but yes i agree, don't glue it, it might leak elsewhere

@itaru:
i totally agree. the lack of a depressed area makes using the touch pad annoying.

the battery indicator remains green

 

hey, i know once again a gpu driver question but is it save to install the new notebook drivers from nvidia? Or does asus use some special moded drivers so we will never be able to use the nb drivers?

 

belzebutt wrote: "Then it got really interesting when Itaru showed up, telling us how to hack and install the latest nVidia drivers. But after a couple of days you told him to go take that into a different thread and he left. That's when the UL30VT thread just died and went back to the occasional repeat question. "

You really have done a bang-up job with the FAQ's and all the hard work it took to pull that off, not to mention having to (yech!) read all 150-pages of the previous thread to get 100% background on the UL30Vt-X1/A1 thread, put things into some kind of perspective, and give it all a new "tone" to boot. Congratulations on a great job, honestly I think you deserve a lot of credit for starting this, realizing how hopeless the old thread had become, with so many repeat posts about the same garbage over and over...so you have my honest appreciation for doing all you've done.

That's a little harsh about attributing itaru's new thread on the drivers to be something negative though. He personally thanked me for suggesting that idea IN the thread as you may recall, and I certainly meant nothing negative in my post about the "Drivers Thread" needing its own space. Of course it was "interesting", but OTOH the whole thread had been sort of taken over by the frenzy to capitulate on the new drivers, and little else was being posted at the time, thus my suggestion, no harm, no foul meant. :wink:

I never have said anything negative about the "Drivers Thread" here, or there in the old thread, other than to mention that there was no apparent performance benefit to switching, something about that, I can't recall exactly what I wrote but it was not a bad pundit or slur by any means.

I hope that something good can come of the new Drivers Thread and that we can all benefit from development of an alternative driver to the 186.xx driver that we are faced with using, but for the new drivers itaru and others have made, developed, and literally written, line by line...THAT is a lot of work!

I am done about this whole deal, and am not trying to over-react to your post by any means, as I understand what you said 100%, it's clear and certain that you don't approve of either my writing, the subjects I take up in earnest, or maybe it's just a grudge...I have no idea, but I'm not going there, belzebutt. I'd just as soon stay clear of hostility if I could...

I'll be happy to contribute what I *know* about SSD's and why I got the Intel brand X25-M if you'd like that, so send me a PM if you wish, outlining exactly what it is you'd like me to 'contribute'. Lord knows I would not like to gather more disfavor by writing something that was not what you had in mind! Hah Hah! I'll give it my best effort, keep it short, concise, and to the point if you give me an idea exactly what it is you want, and it's a done deal. :smile:

Now, back to the subjects at hand, hopefully, and maybe we could just all get along?

 

If you go to the thread linked in the FAQ about how to install the latest nVidia drivers (it's not hard, you basically extract the old drivers, overwrite them with the newer nVidia drivers, add a special INI file and run the correct install) you will not lose any functionality. You won't gain much either except perhaps a short-lived warm fuzzy feeling when you see the PhysX, OpenCL and Cuda checkboxes in CPU-Z. So far no one reported any increase in performance from the newer drivers.

 

I am a little bitter because the last 200 pages of that monster thread only got exciting with the nVidia driver stuff, and I was disappointed seeing it stop, after that it was back to clicking through page after page of crap. He thanked you for your suggest but I took that as him just being polite and just wanting to get stuff done. No harm done of course, I also went through his driver thread and that one was very interesting. It's just that you asked what happened to the UL30VT questions, that's what happened, there's not much to talk about anymore and the last "advanced" topic was the drivers. I think we covered everything. I guess the next thing will be getting a solution for this lose palm rest on the right side.

So tell me what model of SSD you have, and if you recall what other ones people got. I don't recall any issues forcing people to pick a certain type of SSD, let me know if you can think of anything useful to mention other than a couple of model numbers.

Oh here's something that might be useful, a comparison of battery life between HD and SSD. I don't know if anyone did that, but these are pretty general questions anyway that should apply to any notebook.

 

"So tell me what model of SSD you have, and if you recall what other ones people got. I don't recall any issues forcing people to pick a certain type of SSD, let me know if you can think of anything useful to mention other than a couple of model numbers.

Oh here's something that might be useful, a comparison of battery life between HD and SSD. I don't know if anyone did that, but these are pretty general questions anyway that should apply to any notebook."--belzebutt wrote

I went Intel SSD because of the nice support mechanism Intel has built up for SSD owners. There's a special driver (AHCI SSD/RAID driver for Intel boards) that helps with throughput, overall speed, and consistency. The Intel SSD Toolkit is another part of the puzzle, and it's now at v1.3, which compliments TRIM support in Windows 7, ie the 'self cleaning and alignment' of an SSD that is necessary for long lived high speeds, efficiency, and organizing data on the SSD over a long time of use, albeit hard use.

Then there's Intel's overall reputation and a 3-year warranty which is all-encompassing. When you add very fast Read and Seek speed for the Intel SSD's in most benchmarks and practical applications, you can see why people buy Intel SSDs vs more expensive, although often larger SSDs from Corsair, OCZ, Crucial/Micron (one company, two names), Kingston (relatively a new player, but a big effort there), and now OWC (Other World Computing) has a new Sandforce-controller-equipped SSD @ 100GB, 200GB sizes which is reputed to be the fastest conventional SSD available for SATA II.

However a business associate in Australia, who favors Macs (MacBookPros) for his computing, had 2 (two) of the 200GB OWC SSDs go South on him, ie they failed, and swore them off as unreliable. He now uses a Corsair 256GB SSD with xlnt performance and no problems...I'm not sure which model number.

Battery life is really quite good with an SSD vs. a platter HD system. I mean after all an SSD has no moving parts and takes very little energy to operate it @ 100% efficiency, so it's a win/win scenario there. I am getting almost 2 hours more battery life with an SSD in the UL30VT-series notebook, a notebook system that is CULV anyway, so an SSD compliments this type of notebook particularly, vs say a Core i7 CPU'd notebook, which is going to eat up all the battery in 2 hours or so anyway, SSD or no SSD.

With my X1 notebook I've found myself forgetting that there's a HD at all in the notebook as there's absolutely zero sound, no vibration of the notebook from the HD spinning, which can happen with any platter-type HD, so it's sort of other-worldly to be using these things. Then however, I'll go do something, anything with the notebook, and everything is hyper-speed: launching applications is instant, like Photoshop CS3 Extended takes about 10-15 seconds to fully launch with a platter HD, while my SSD has me already viewing the first picture I want, launched, and all functions 100% operational in less than 5 seconds-- sometimes it seems it's launched before I am ready for it!

Web pages are a particularly interesting thing with SSDs also, as the browser will cache a web page once you select it, and the SSD knows exactly where and how to find it again should you want to select it again, and will aid any browser's cache speed considerably, hence web pages sort of "Pop" up in an instant-- as long as your internet connection is a good one, of course.

I enclosed a graphic from ATTO Tools Benchmarking Tool, which is SSD Savvy and gives very accurate readings of SSD speed, so you can see how fast this Intel SSD really is, and why I'm getting a WEI score of 7.8 points for the HD...just 1/10 of a point from a perfect score. It's fast where it counts, literally, and that graphic shows it: we typically are using the file sizes where the Intel SSD scores its high marks more than the small, minute files sizes where it's not as fast, thus fast is where fast does.

Contrasting Intel SSDs with others: basically for some reason the other brands write faster than the Intel SSDs, but few if any are faster reading, which is what an SSD spends most of its time doing in a notebook especially...ie finding stuff not writing stuff! I'm sure you could ask Intel SSD owners why they bought one and you'd get 25 or more different answers, but I think I touched on some of the important points as to why they sell more SSDs than anybody else: quality, support, warranty, brand recognition of course, speed of applications, and specifically fast read speeds are the main reasons that I see people buying these SSDs, specifically the X25-M in 40GB, 80GB, or 160GB sizes are the big sellers.

Add to that the benefit of more battery life, without a doubt for any SSD vs a platter/mechanical HD, and you pose a very interesting argument for investing in an SSD for notebook owners. It is expensive, I'll agree, but once you go SSD you never go back to mechanical HDs, it's just too painfully slow!

If you have other questions, I'll do my best to answer them...I tried to anticipate questions in general, and almost everything I wrote about SSDs from Intel applies to most other SSDs also...Intel just simply makes and sells more SSDs than any other company at this time.

 

Sorry, I left out the graphic from that post, my bad....here it is...

 

The light remains green. Odd thing is that the color of the light doesn't indicate whether the battery is charging or not. It just turns green whenever it's at 95% or above even if the battery is still charging. It will stop charging once it reaches 100% and then will only start charging again once it drops to below 94% or thereabouts.

Nope, you cannot and will never be able to use the official notebook drivers from Nvidia as is. It needs modification which is detailed in the link provided in belzebutt's FAQ in the Video section. A belated thank you to belzebutt for including my video driver thread in his excellent FAQ.

I second this as I am also interested in the power drain between HD and SSD. My guess is that using SSD improves battery life since there aren't any motors to power.

Speaking of battery, I'm also interested in knowing how much capacity drop the batteries on ULxxVT notebooks have suffered especially those who have owned their notebooks for a while now and use the battery a lot. Use HWMonitor to see the current full charge capacity of the battery. Download it from CPUID

My 5600mAH 8-cell battery has a designed capacity of 84000 mWh, and after 4.5 months the full charge capacity has dropped to 79140 mWh, about 6%. The funny thing is that all of that drop occured within the first month of ownership. So far I very rarely use the battery since my notebook is usually plugged in, but I never take the battery out. After the first month I was worried that Asus had used cheap low quality batteries for their VT notebooks, although now I'm pleased that the capacity drop on my battery seems to have stopped. I am curious whether others have had different experiences with their batteries.

 

I have the A1 and have been using it for about just over a month (got it after easter)

Its designed capactiy is 84000 mWh, but its full charge capactiy is sitting at 80715 mWh. a 4% decrease.

i use my battery in complete cycles, using a complete cycle almost daily. laptop is on since 8-9am, sleeps 1hr, lasts till about 5-6pm at night. then when the battery hits critical, i plug it in and immediately pull out the battery. when the day is over, the computer is off and the battery is put back in charged over night till 100% capacity. the cycle repeats.

i've been told doing this cuts battery life tremendously. what is recommended instead?

@rexezer:
I am really considering getting an intel x-25 (80gb) as i use it on the bus so often and am paranoid about hdd damage/accelerated wear...but its so costly! what are the total batter life times you get, and what is the voltage drain with the ssd? if i am reading CUPID correctly, mine is sitting at 15.55V?

 

From what I recall the best way to save your Li-Ion battery is to never let it discharge too much, and not let it charge fully. So keep it between 20% and 80% if you're really concerned.

Then again the best way to preserve your notebook is to never use it and same goes for the battery, but that's not realistic. If I were you I would still let it charge fully so that you have a full charge if you need it, but try not to let it go critical.

There's a lot of good info here, I haven't read it all but if you do and find some golden nuggets be sure to let us know
Welcome to Battery University

 

Thanks alot for that link belzebutt!

very useful.

I am changing my recharging habits.

in a summary:

1. avoid full discharges everyday (i.e morning to evening, hibernate, recharge over night) instead use it from full capacity to roughly 20% capacity, before recharging.
   
2. every month or so, do a full discharge and a full recharge. not so much for battery life, but for calibration so the laptop can better estimate battery life.
   
3. don't have this mentality that once its plugged in, its starting a cycle. its not 'using' up a cycle as there is no memory effect when it comes to lithium ions. topping up during the day is no problem. its not initiating a 'cycle'
   
4. avoid heat at all costs. its the primary battery killer.
   
5. the worst state for a battery to be in, is in the laptop, connected to the mains due to a constant recharge/discharge in the 95 to 100 capacity range and heat from the laptop. if using the computer at home/a long time, pull out the battery and put it in a air tight bag an keep cool to prevent dust.
   
6. for extended periods, leave it at 40% capacity in a bag, in the refrigerator.

i'm going to use the laptop from 100% capcity from morning till evening. it usually is at about 15-20% at which case i will plug it into the AC and pull out the battery. when its time to sleep, i will shutdown/hibernate, place the battery in and charge over night. the adapter will stop at 100% capacity. it also means i don't have to bring around an adapter all day

 

Hibernating vs Sleep on the UL30vt..

Guys, several times I have left machine in sleep mode only to came back and find notebook went into hibernation..resuming windows. The machine has to write to disk to hibernate, right?

OK, I find hibernation sort of useless as the time between full boot and resume is only a few seconds. And, twice I have resumed only to get the cannot resume message and all suspended work is, of course, history.

Only with my Asus laptops have I had issues with sleep/hibernation, no big deal but odd. For day to day stuff I find sleep very fast; to and from.

For safety I always use shutdown when transporting MY laptop, YMMV. I have seen the damage that was done on a laptop placed in briefcase that was thought to be hibernating. The Dali' Clock comes to mind.

Any like problems?

TIA

 

I often hibernate the computer sleep when i will not be using it for less than an hour or so. if not, i would hibernate it.

i find hibernation especially useful, for some reason, my hibernation reboot time is around 20-25 seconds, my boot time roughly 60 seconds. my sleep reboot time roughly 3-5 seconds.

the one time i had issues with a dead screen on waking up was due to myself changing the power source during the hibernation process (i.e. plugged it in to mains)

 

Hi UL30VT owners...

What battery life do you get with Turbo33 off, Brightness full, WiFi on, Bluetooth on...???

Thanks...

 

Would a UL30VT-A1 user (5600mah) go on th UL30JT thread and run some battery performance tests for us to compare the upcoming model.

Specifically: Turbo33 off, Turbo Boost on, brightness full, WiFi on, Bluetooth on, power-saving mode

Thanks. =)

 

All these battery questions..and to compare to models not yet released?

Most people have a life so are not going to sit there with all these random settings for different run times.

Ok, on the tech side of this I would suggest HWmonitor. Agree on screen settings. Make settings and run HWmonitor then write down your CURRENT CAPACITY. Now unplug AC, wait for 30 minutes and then log CURRENT CAPACITY while on battery. Or do it for 4 hours..your life right?

Start - Finish = (your answer here)

 

After about 6, 3/4 discharges, I'm hanging about 80775 mWh after 4 weeks of use.

My Dell battery died after 13 months of normal use. Batteries are just evil!

 

"@rexezer:
I am really considering getting an intel x-25 (80gb) as i use it on the bus so often and am paranoid about hdd damage/accelerated wear...but its so costly! what are the total batter life times you get, and what is the voltage drain with the ssd? if i am reading CUPID correctly, mine is sitting at 15.55V?," tanhi wrote.

First, I have the X1 version of the UL30VT you might notice, so my battery capacity is 25-30% less than the A1's is, ie 4400Mah vs 5600Mah (61,600mWh vs 84,500mWh), thus comparison would be difficult. For a practical assessment though we could use percentage of increase with each battery type and get a rough estimation of the benefit for an SSD owner vs platter HD owner.

Also, we have to agree on format, and I use a battery utility that not many of you (if any) are even aware of: EmBatPower Battery Utility, which can be found @ CNET.com Search function if you're curious about it. It's Shareware @$10, but I know the developer from business on the Net, and got a free copy a few years ago when he first released it. It is deadly accurate, and reports many of the same things that Battery Monitor (another great battery utility) reports, or Everest Ultimate for that matter, but EmBatPower has a time/mWh graph system which is particularly interesting to see rate of discharge vs capacity, and other features of interest that make it different and more accurate vs other utilities. I have a particular dislike for Hardware Monitor for battery use, and don't ever use that utility for battery use which I needn't go into here, but nonetheless I discourage using it for batteries.

OK, sorry for the diversion, here goes...

For accuracy let's agree to use mWh as the "battery meter" vs Mah, which is specifically capacity itself not capacity/time like mWh. Here are my battery time ratings from my review of the X1 on Amazon.com, which I'll give the URL for also:

"Run time with BlueTooth & WiFi, ON, iTunes ON playing music constantly without break: Discharge down to 4% battery to Hibernation each run:

Run 1) 6 hours 14 minutes

Run 2) 5 hours 45 minutes

Run 3) 5 hours 57 minutes

Run 4) 6 hours 06 minutes

Run 12) 6 hours 11 minutes

Run 14) 5 hours 37 minutes

Run 15) 5 hours 58 minutes

Then for runs 7-10 I charted run time with iTunes OFF, BlueTooth Off, and WiFi On:

Run 7) 7 hours 05 minutes

Run 8) 6 hours 58 minutes

Run 9) 7 hours 11 minutes

Run 10) 6 hours 45 minutes

Finally, I tried my best to eek the most battery run time possible, with WiFi Off, BlueTooth Off, and iTunes Off, with the computer virtually idling but a work script writing to disk in Microsoft Word until the computer went into Hibernation:

Run 5) 7 hours 45 minutes

Run 6) 7 hours 49 minutes", from my review, "Wavey Davey" moniker, here:

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: ASUS UL30Vt-X1 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (11 Hours of Battery Life)

There are several good reviews there in addition to my own, so I encourage anybody with a little time to kill to read some of them, as they also talk about their battery use for comparison.

From above, my *average* run time back in platter HD days was in the mid-6-hour range, while typical use with iTunes on (I often write with music on), BlueTooth and WiFi "On" was less than 6 hours, typically 5 hours and 45 minutes +/- 10 minutes.

Now with my new 80GB SSD, and previously with a larger SSD of 160GB (that's reserved for my new G51JX-A1, and was previously in my returned N71JQ-A1), ie it makes no difference in terms of size of the SSD, I am averaging more than 8 hours battery life with iTunes, WiFi and BlueTooth "On"...a pretty dramatic improvement.

With BT and WiFi "Off" along with iTunes "Off", I can now achieve almost 10 hours run time with the SSD in place, which was virtually impossible to even think about with a platter HD...ie eeking out every last minute of run time, with Energy Saver Settings on "Battery" in P4G Hybrid, 40% screen brightness, and 5%-60& CPU speed, totally minimal settings to do that.

That is the practical aspect of my battery use from new to now. My battery has not deteriorated at all since new by the way, it will to this day charge up to 60,752mWh (build capacity 61,600mWh), so it is still @ 99.5% of new capacity according to both EmBatPower Utility and Everest Ultimate, two utilities that seem to agree to the mWh about battery use for me personally...so I think I have the mWh pretty accurate for my particular battery. Everest also reports my "Battery Life" has deteriorated "1%", so it's virtually like new after 2.5 months of heavy use, every day use during the week and some casual use on weekends.

Out of all that timing and simple math I get an increase in run time of approximately 25% with the SSD in place for normal use, and during maximal battery use with Energy Saver settings @ minimal CPU and screen brightness it's closer to 30% increased run time, both of which are significant improvements.

EDIT: My apologies for bad math and editing both! For "maximal battery use" the increase in run time is about 30%, NOT 50% as I had figured that increase out initially against 6 hours run time (normal running time), not almost 8 hours run time, which is the correct comparison. If an SSD were to give 50% run time increase it would be a very interesting deal, right? I think not! The correct figure is about 30%...again, my apologies for such a blatant error!

I don't think that my results are atypical of general experience in the population of laptop owners. In fact I would bet that this battery run time increase is pretty accurate and normal with an SSD in place. With high performance 7200RPM platter HD's the increase will be more significant, I think also, vs 5400RPM "battery miser" platter HD's...another thing consider.

That is about all I can contribute in terms of battery use with an SSD in place, ie it's pretty much the whole picture with my particular SSD use and a UL30VT-series notebook. As for any particular battery tricks or treats that I practice? I do Calibrate my battery often, literally about once a month or more, sometimes twice a month, as I am a believer in that particular "theory" about battery life and care/maintenance.

That is I'll charge the battery fully, then let it discharge right down to Hibernation, then immediately afterward charge it fully again. This keeps the battery "clock function" in check (it's my contention), and will over time make a battery take full charge easily, and consistently, which means more battery run time during the battery's lifespan.

If any of this helps readers to justify an SSD purchase, I hope it eases the pain of the cost of an SSD, which is just about unbelievable vs GB per $$...at this time anyway. I cannot qualify an SSD any better than I have in this thread, as it has totally altered my thoughts of laptop battery use and performance. My notebooks are truly fast with an SSD, performance is just incredible to be honest about it vs a platter HD, and if battery run time can increase *that much* with an SSD I do believe the cost is justified.

It's really a case of where you put your priorities. I think that an SSD with maximum RAM is the way to go with laptops, in general, as those two factors will tend to increase performance absolutely dramatically, in fact it's stunning to say it better vs platter HD use and OEM RAM. Add to those ideas significantly increased battery run time and the safety factor to boot (SSDs are less prone to damage from sudden movement, especially when "On"), and I will put an SSD in a notebook every time, given the opportunity.

I hope all this data and my thoughts have been of some value in this discussion about SSDs and run time, and the corollary issue of performance.

 

sweet i'm glad i got the 40gb intel ssd strictly for battery life with and performance increase is a side thought for me

 

Dang, 80 hours of battery test..if the brown santa drops anymore stuff off my wife will have me killed..but I'm looking at the 250G SSD drive when prices drop some more.

 

The reason you may find your machine coming back from hibernate when you actually put it to sleep is because of your sleep/hibernate timers. Say if your power profile says "sleep after 1 hour" and "hibernate after 4 hours", and you put the machine to sleep and come back 6 hours later, I believe it will actually hibernate after 4 hours even while it's in sleep mode, so you're going to find it hibernating.

Now, if you let the laptop sit there for 6 hours you can probably afford to wait an extra 20 seconds to resume from hibernate, and remember, hibernation has some benefits. First, it doesn't use any battery power, and second, it's invulnerable to any power/RAM glitches.

So you can leave your PC hibernated for a week and you won't drop your battery charge, but sleep mode will use up a few % of battery per day.

Also, if you accidentally remove the battery while in sleep mode you're going to crash the PC, or you get the odd RAM corruption, your PC will also crash. In hibernate mode it's pretty much rock solid. It does take a LOT of time to read 4 Gb from the HD, so if I know I'm going to be using it in a couple of hours I just put it to sleep.

Windows 7 also has hybrid sleep mode where it does a hibernate and sleep at the same time, so it takes a long time to put it to sleep because it saves the data to the HD, but it wakes up fast because it's still really just sleeping (but the data is saved to the hibernate file on the HD in case your power goes out or RAM craps out). Personally I don't use it because I find it annoying that it takes so long to shut off.

I say make sleep your default but keep your hibernate timer to something like 6 hours.

 

When I first got the notebook I was obsessed with testing battery performance, and clocked the notebook almost every time I used the battery at work and home both. There were actually even more tests than those listed, but I threw out a couple because they were either incomplete, or altered/interrupted by one cause or another. Reason? Other people's claims of near 10-11 hours of run time, which I simply didn't believe nor could I attain such results, to wit!

I hear you about the "brown santa" deal, as I am in a similar lock-down at my house, hostage of my wife's math...on our budget!

As for wanting the 250GB SSD, I take it you mean the 256GB SSD...but either way your choice is xlnt because you will see rather big results in run time and performance both, and they will most likely shock the monkey a bit, as they did me! Especially performance, if you have never used an SSD before...it will astonish you how the notebook will perform with an SSD--it's like night and day difference.

It's sort of like having your own personal RAID "0" volume in the notebook, with read/seek performance of 250MB/sec++ pretty much being the story after installing an SSD. It's important to also have the right Intel RAID/SSD SATA AHCI driver in place, and use the Intel SSD Toolkit on the SSD consistently. Turning off "Page File" completely is another inside "tip" to do (if you have maxx RAM that is...leave Page File "On" with OEM RAM). Most of all it's impossible to achieve really high numbers from an SSD without the latest firmware in place on the SSD...that is a very high priority thing to do when you 1st get your new SSD--ie do the firmware update when it's new, empty, no OS or files on it whatsoever...otherwise it may fail, and/or you'll lose the files and OS both!

As if we weren't "tech oriented enough"...when you get an SSD you have to learn even more tech than you knew before, it seems, so be prepared to step up a notch or two there once you have an SSD installed...it's just part of the whole deal that sort of "happens", whether you want it or not.

About prices coming down: I wish it were true, but with the heavy demand for NAND memory (the essence of an SSD) these days, with things like Apple's iPad and all the new smart phones, iPhones, Android phones etc taking all the supply of the memory long before it's produced even, it's possible that SSD prices will stay the same, or even *increase* this year, and next to boot, unless something major-league different starts happening with the manufacturers of the NAND memory.

The manufacturers are either going to have to make a Hell of a lot more of the NAND memory. learn to produce it cheaper with better processes than are in place now, or a whole new technology is going to have to be invented to cause prices to drop at all, much less be significantly lower than they are now. The demand is so great for the NAND memory that I honestly think that prices will definitely go up this year, sooner than later unless something big happens to change the market games that are being played presently.

 

I've had my A1 since January. Almost all the time I've had it, it's been plugged in sitting on top of a notebook cooler in my living room. I recently went on a trip and was on battery, on a plane, maybe 4 - 5 hours total. According to Hardware Monitor, my full charge capacity is 77,385 mWh and the current capacity is 76,020 mWh.

I've been using Battery Bar and rates battery wear at 7.9%. I've had Battery Bar installed for several months now and the battery wear has always been close to what it is now. Battery Bar also rates the full lifetime as 5 hours 37 minutes.

Did I get a sub-par battery with my A1?

 

I don't fully understand your questions, or terminology. Do you mean "runtime" not "lifetime" in your last sentence, for instance?

If you have the 8-Cell 84K mWh/56K Mah notebook battery, there is something wrong with the monitoring tool methinks, not the battery...can you download a copy of Everest Ultimate, for example, or Battery Monitor, or EmBatPower utility, ie get another source for the information on the battery to verify what your present source says?

I think something is all mucked up there because the battery should be at least higher than 80KmWh for its charge capacity. The other battery utilities will also give you the "design capacity", which will tell us about how the battery was made, to nail down this idea of there being something wrong there with those ratings from your present source.

If the other utilities verify what you have, however, then you indeed did get a sub-par battery, one that is way out of specs...I just find it hard to swallow though, that a battery could drop 7K mWh just because it's been plugged in a lot since new...that doesn't make any sense to me.

Please try another utility then post back here the results, thank you.

 

EmBatPower gives the following information:

Design Capacity - 84000 mWh
Full Charge Capacity - 77685 mWh
Current Capacity - 75540 mWh
Charge Rate - 0 mV
Life Left - 97%

Does that make more sense? Can you explain what the numbers indicate? Is this normal?

Thanks

 

The data listed can be interpreted like so:

Battery wear: 1- [(full charge capacity) / (design capacity)] = 1- (77685/84000) = 8.12%

Your battery charged at 97% has a capacity of 75540mWh.

Charge rate at 0 mV means your battery is currently not being charged.

From what I'm seeing, your battery is normal.

 

Thanks a lot rexrzer727!

You're little quasi-miniblogs are really useful haha

Interesting that you get a 25% increase in battery life. i think as an A1 user i get about 8-10 hours? meaning i'd get 11-12 on a SDD! :O

wow, thats really good. a 1% wear rate? how are you charging/using your battery? draining it to 20% or something else

***UPDATE ON WARPING
any users experiencing the creaking RH palm rest and lifting RHS...try tightening the screws on the underside in a criss-cross manner (similar to how you would for a replacing a tyre)

the results we're instantaneous! there is no more creaking unless i press really hard. mine were really lose and tightening fixed it. i also discovered that the HDD cover is made of aluminium (it looked like black plastic), for heat dissapation. does that mean the whole undersurface is aluminium too?

to test the warping/lifting, i slid an A4 sheet of paper under the rests and it stops meaning that the contact is actually quite tight and the weight is actually been distributed to the front leg.

itaru and hydra, test it! it might get rid of the creaking/sharp edges

 

My HWMonitor shows a max capacity of 79K. Does anyone actually get 80K+, and when does this number change?

 

My UL30VT shows 84000 mWh (design capacity). However, keep in mind that some UL30 units are equipped with a lower capacity battery. This may be the reason you're seeing the 79k mWh value. Your full charge capacity will usually be lower than the design capacity and this is normal. If your 79k is the full charge capacity, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Battery degrades as soon as it is manufactured.

 

Yea, only have 4 weeks on her so I'm, sitting at 80775 out of 84000mWh. I'll worry when this drops to 8000 nWh

Yes agree on the sleep issues, W7 must do things different. I need to RTFM.

tanhi

No creaking with mine. Mine must have been built on a Friday as opposed to shifts coming in hung over from the week end? The edges do not appear sharp edged like my P6831 which can cut you!

Thx all!

 

I think we all are keeping an eye on the market prices ..and my honey-do side of the house is keeping an eye on me

I'm just suspisious if this a planed "shortage" or just crazy demand? The economy is still not 100% here state side with a lot of guys and gals looking for work. I would venture demand is still down a bit on these luxury items, no?

 

I am unsure of an increase in prices of SSDs. All technology gets cheaper. except apple, in which case, the cheapest time to buy it is when it is released.

either way, does anyone know where the fan for the ul30vt is?

 

I liked Dave's results but the ratio of Full to Current Capacity at 0 charge rate suggest that 97% is the "Life" indicator. So your wear is now at 3%.

None of our batteries has ever reached the Design Capacity so this is just for reference. The Current capacity is the one that we should be interested in as when the battery "wears" this will drop.

What is not shown is the rate of drop as batteries WEAR. Has anyone seen a battery at full charge but 10 minutes later it's dead?

 

Under your keyboard, left side. Very easy to clean but careful with the four top clips on keyboard. See pictures from first 30vt thread.

 

3% is not the battery wear on msmcintosh's battery. The reason why the battery isn't charging at 97% is because it is designed that way to prevent overcharging and potentially damaging the battery cells. Most Li-ion batteries today are set to dis-engage the charging mechanism when the battery is at 95% or more. If you want to charge it up to 100%, let the battery drain below 95% before plugging in the power.

 

Yep, my bad. I was thinking he was at 100%. It's just I've never seen these reach near the designed level.

..stuffs rag in mouth..

 

Thanks for trying out another utility, it's appreciated and gives the whole picture with your particular battery.

I take a slightly more *pessimistic* view of your battery vs the others being listed here...3% capacity loss in a virtually new battery means it is at least 2% weaker than all of the other A1 batteries I've seen here, so it is a trifle weak vs the norm. Keep an eye on it, and if you continue to see charge capacity slip even more (let's say if it hits 6% in another month or less) you might initiate a Tech Support case on your battery with Asus (Call the #888 telephone number if you're in the USA...out of the USA contact your local Asus distributor/reseller/Asus Tech Support).

This might seem to be unnecessary, but I don't like to see a new battery slip 3% in a new state like yours has done, and I'd simply keep my eyes on it and see if the trend continues unabated...if it continues to slip at 3% a month for example, I'd petition Asus for a replacement battery--at some point.

OTOH the battery may just have a few weak cells, as some do, and it will stay where it is and deteriorate at a normal level until it becomes useless, as all batteries do at some point.

You might try the Calibrate Method with your battery, and see if it helps the situation. That is charge the battery to 100% capacity, or as high as it will currently go (98%, 99%, whatever) then discharge it fully, down to where the notebook goes into Hibernation...and LET it go into Hibernation. After that fully charge the battery, and see where it ends up.

In 2 weeks, or after another 10-15 charge cycles, Calibrate it again, and see how things are at that point. This should help to stabilize the battery's charge cycles and allow it to fully charge, wherever full charge ends up being, be it 97%, 95%, 98%, whatever point it will be charging to.

I think after it's been Calibrated twice you will see this particular battery's life-cycle unfold, ie whether it will continue to be @ or about 3% less than the norm, or whether it continues to deteriorate at a higher rate than normal.

David said your battery is normal...with qualifications in my view it is normal. See how it goes after being Calibrated twice, or just keep a close eye on it if you don't Calibrate it, and see how things are going after a couple months...by then you can surely figure out if the battery is sub-standard, or just has a few weak cells and will always be 3% behind the norm.

I do not mean to throw up a Red Flag and write that your battery is a bad one, not just yet anyway...just keep an eye on it, and/or if you can Calibrate it a couple times after a few cycles, then see what's going on with respect to its full capacity...I think the answer will be right there in those percentage numbers.

 

tanhi wrote: "Interesting that you get a 25% increase in battery life. i think as an A1 user i get about 8-10 hours? meaning i'd get 11-12 on a SDD! :O

wow, thats really good. a 1% wear rate? how are you charging/using your battery? draining it to 20% or something else."

The increase in battery run time (not "life") was a very pleasant surprise, but not a complete surprise. I figured to get something out of my SSD investment, but when I saw the increase to more than 8 hours run time vs less than 6 hours run time with my Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache HD in place it sort of stunned me. All factors being considered that is at least a 25% increase in run time with the Intel SSD, or being a real optimist you could say 33% increase in run time...I'm careful with what I say with numbers so I wrote 25% for this group of UL30VT owners.

I can't speak for your battery use, just my own, but if you install an SSD I think you will get at least a 25% increase in run time vs a platter HD. This seems to be about normal for people on the 'Net: if you do any reading on this subject you can see increased run time being mentioned over and over. YMMV, as everybody's uses differ with battery run time, but there will be some benefit running an SSD.

As to my battery charge methods, and my particular battery in the UL30VT-X1, I am doing nothing special really, just taking care of this one like I do my other notebooks. I try to use a full charge cycle when I am on battery, that is I usually let the notebook go to 7% battery charge remaining before I plug it back into AC power again. There are times when I can't attend to that cycle, and I put the notebook back on AC with varying percentages of run time left, but I do try to discharge the battery as much as possible during a cycle, generally.

Where I differ from most people's battery charging and discharging techniques is how much I Calibrate the battery. I will Calibrate a battery every 15-20 cycles, and I have been doing this for years with my notebooks, whether it's made by Asus, Apple, Acer, or Sony it doesn't matter-- I've always done this. Over time I think this helps a battery maintain a full charge, but that's just what my experience has been...YMMV. With the notebooks in my stable the past 10 years or so I have achieved long battery life, with sustained battery use in all of them, using the Calibrate Method.

This particular battery in my UL30VT-series notebook seems to be a good one, as batteries go, as it still charges up to 60,752mWh via both EmBatPower's reading and Everest Ultimate's reading. So far so good with this one, as it is as close to Design Capacity as is practical to get in my experience...literally 95.5% of that capacity, so it is quite good. It won't stay there forever, as all batteries deteriorate at a sustained rate over time, but for 2.5 months of heavy use my battery is doing comparatively very well...I will continue with the present program and see how it goes in a couple months.

 

I can only speak from watching the market as you are all doing, but I am doing a bit more research perhaps, reading into Tech Republic and ZDNet News Digest every day, and watching the wholesale market trends also, along with the retail market. What happens is that the quote necessary for making, let's say 40 million iPads with various GB flavors, 30 million Androids by Motorola and others, and 50 million Gen. 4 iPhones for the rest of this year gets factored into the supply chain, and then the manufacturers realize that Samsung, Toshiba, and the other Chinese manufacturers of the NAND memory are only making XXX Billion GB of the memory...then the concept of shortages enters the picture, and prices on retail units stay the same, or increase.

That is the picture I am talking about, and this year is particularly grim in that regard, therefore my ideas about prices either staying the same, or increasing if things don't improve on the supply chain for NAND memory. I am not trying to scare people or say something wacky at all, this is just pure and simple supply and demand economics I am speaking about, and the amount of NAND being produced this year is less than the demand for devices made by Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, and the other cell phone and computer manufacturers who are using huge amounts of NAND for this year's products.
Understand where I am coming from with my predictions now?

I hope that this qualifies what I wrote a little bit, and some of it is my perception about these things also, so please take it for what it's worth...it's not the gospel, it's simply what I see happening with the production and retail markets this calendar year, no more, no less.

 

Problem fixed. Thanks

 

You have to grab camera drivers from Asus support page. Make sure to follow their instructions since there are 3 or so versions of cameras used in these notebooks.

If you already have drivers on, then I don't know what the problem is. Try reinstalling or something -.-

 

Thanks Rexrzer727. I'll give your suggestions a try.

I'm only a novice when it comes to battery information. I just thought "wow", it's design capacity is 84000 mWh and my full charge capacity is 77700 mWh after a few months of use. I was under the impression that the more you use the battery, the greater the wear and I hardly use my battery. Is that a misconception?

 

"Thanks Rexrzer727. I'll give your suggestions a try.

I'm only a novice when it comes to battery information. I just thought "wow", it's design capacity is 84000 mWh and my full charge capacity is 77700 mWh after a few months of use. I was under the impression that the more you use the battery, the greater the wear and I hardly use my battery. Is that a misconception?"--msmcintosh wrote

I've had quite a bit of battery experience, especially with Li-Ion batteries, both in R/C race cars and trucks, and in laptop computers, so maybe I can offer you a some tips since you say you lack experience at this time.

Batteries are funny things, and yes, using them will wear them out, but what's the point of having one and not using it at all, or very little? This idea is a simple one: using your battery should be part of your repertoire about how you use your laptop, not an exclusion. Now, HOW you use the battery is the key to the whole equation, and the idea here is to get maximum use out of the battery during its lifetime, which is finite of course.

If you don't have a "routine" about using the laptop's battery, then there is little hope for your battery's future, so let me give you a basic routine that should help you out, along with some examples.

First of all, use the thing, that's Rule No.1! Don't leave it IN the laptop 100% of the time if you aren't using it, and I mean REMOVE it if you are in the habit of not using the battery for a week or two at all, and still have it IN the laptop trying to get charged and discharged...that is death to batteries, ie they cannot survive or survive well with this sort of non-use. So let me say it again: use the battery, and if you're not using it for an extended time REMOVE it from the laptop and store it in a cool place, about 40% charged, preferably in a HD plastic bag in a cool and dark place.

When you are using it, try to discharge it fully, or at least try to structure your use of the battery around that idea if possible. If it's not possible, then we'll deal with it another way but that's Rule No.2: try and discharge it fully when you use it.

During normal use of the battery charge it back to 100% charged status so it's ready for the next service. However, if you've used it partially, say down to 40-60% discharged, and you'll be using it again later in the day for sure/certain, do not charge it fully, just put the laptop to sleep or Hibernate it (even better), then use the battery until it's fully discharged at the later session.

So Rule No.3, don't charge the battery if you've discharged it partially and plan on using it more later in the day: Hibernate or Sleep the laptop, then discharge it fully if possible at the second session.

Those are some basic things which are common sense, so let's try out some more advanced ideas which will help your battery maintain a long life, and give you xlnt service during its lifetime.

After 15-20 cycles, either full or partial discharges (it doesn't matter, each run counts) it's best to Calibrate the battery with a complete, full discharge right down to where the laptop Hibernates, then immediately charge it fully up to 100% capacity. If you don't use the battery much during a 30-day period, ie if you don't use 15-20 cycles in that period, Calibrate it anyway! Calibration keeps the battery at its peak by resetting its "clock", its ability to be fully charged after being 100% discharged. Calibration is a good thing for batteries, so do it with regularity and the battery will stay healthy and ready for action.

If you're not using the battery at all, if you're parked at home or the office and not using the battery for an extended period of time, REMOVE the battery from the laptop and keep it stored at about 40% of capacity in a cool, dark place (cabinet or office drawer will do fine) in a HD plastic bag, preferably. When you're ready to use it again, replace it into the laptop, charge it 100%, and you're ready for action! Oops, I double posted that...but that's ok it's a good thing because it's so darned important!

The rest is pretty simple:

1) Use a good battery utility to keep track of how the battery is doing with its discharges and charges

2) Time the battery with your utility of choice every couple of discharges, and see how it's doing with respect to how it charges, ie the mWh it reaches, and how the discharge goes, ie how long and how 'deep' it goes into a complete discharge

3) Don't worry about the battery, except for runs where you are using the battery utility, just use it and keep track of the charges and discharges on Notepad, your calendar, any convenient place, so that you'll have a handle on when to Calibrate it next

Those basic "rules" along with the common sense, and your battery utility is all you need to take care of the battery 100% of the time, so there you go, I hope those tips help you out with battery management. It's really easy with today's batteries to optimize and get the most out of them, just use your head, don't be afraid to use the thing, and most of all discharge the battery fully if possible, as that's what they like most of all!

 

This is a little off on the battery talk; I do not notice a problem with my wifi connection on my A1 but since I travel a lot I thought I should install another antenna when I tear my laptop apart for the backlit keyboard mod.

My question is, if I want to put the antenna into my monitor, am I just connecting it to the existing antenna? Everything I've read so far talks about plugging the second antenna into the card itself which is near the hard drive. But someone was also saying the monitor is the best place to house the new antenna. Any details on how to install the antenna into the monitor?

Also, this has not been discussed at all as far as I can tell but I'm really annoyed with the the sleep switch on my laptop. If I close the monitor 80% it cuts off and puts the computer to sleep. My other laptops require about 95% closure to put the computer to sleep. Is there a way to fix this with software or is it a hardware problem? I like to pass my laptop to other people with the lid almost all the way closed and it drives me crazy that this computer turns off so easily.