S6231 Battery Meter

Hi everyone,

Been using the S6231 for about a month now and I'm very happy with it But I just recently noticed that the power meter in Windows 2000 is starting to perform an incorrect assessment of the amount of battery life I have left. I was able to run on 0% battery life (according to the power meter) for more than 5 minutes before the computer finally shut down. I have tried to do full discharge/recharge cycles 3 times, but the problem seems to be persisting.

Anyone with some useful advice on how to get the operating system or computer to report the correct percentage of battery life remaining?

Thanks

 

Have you tried a battery monitoring program such as Speedswitch XP to see if it provides a more accurate battery life?

 

same here, i'm using S7011, at 0%, it can still go 15 minutes. I'm using speedswitchxp, reports the same as windows.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*

 

Reminds me of when I used to work for a major car company. How many miles you could go after the fuel light came on was a closely guarded secret. Turns out the company used to put the (approximate) number in the owner's manual but got sued by someone who went one mile less than that and ran out of gas (presumably with a gas station in sight?)! Also, the trip computer was designed so that when it showed zero miles left until empty, there was still a little bit in the tank. Amazing what the threat of lawsuits will make you do! Probably not what's happening here, though . . .

Mike

 

deltav, i tried that trick, but turns out, when the light comes up, you have approx 10Litres left (someone convert to gallons), but this is for the asian. even in my merc i have around 10-12L left.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*

 

I thought one would want a little extra juice to maintain the "suspend" info in ram so that no data is lost which is what would happen if windows did a shutdown while you were typing something. I had "warn" set to 7% and "suspend" set to 3% remaining. Perhaps I'll lower warn to 5% and "suspend" to 0%. Based on your experience, there should be enough juice to suspend data long enough till I plug it in.

According to my manual reading, complete discharge/recharge cycles are not only not required anymore as modern battery technology doesn't suffer from memory defect (or whatever it's called), doing so can shorten overall battery life. The current strategy is multiple top offs, i.e. when you get home plug it in and let it top off whether you used it a little or a lot. And not to worry about overcharging because the charging circuit shuts off when the battery is at 100% according to the user manual.

-David

 

drw, i set warning at 10%, and suspend to ram at 0%. It still has juice to power up and go on for a while after suspending

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*

 

drw, you are right about the discharge thing. This is the case for all lithium batteries. Li batteries should be stored fully charged so that as time passes and they lose charge they don't hit 0% except after a very long time. This was not the case for Ni batteries, which should be drained completely every now and then and were stored empty.

Ex. cell phones. A few years back you would buy a phone with an Ni battery that is totally empty. But today your cell phone comes with an Li battery that is more than half charged (depending on how long it has been manuf).

But Li batteries like Ni batteries if they don't go thru a cycle every now and then they get "lazy" and would require something like three consecutive cycles to get them "up and running again".[ ] BTW by lazy I mean would hold less charge than they should.

BTW drw, I would suggest you test it at 0% before you set it as such for good. Not all batteries are created equal, they come from different sources. So maybe just test it with nothing essential running to see if it will last the few minutes needed to plug it back in if suspended at 0%

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
N6010: P4M 3.2G, 512MB Dual 333MHz, 60GB 7200RPM, ATI 9700M, 17" WXGA+
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>drw, i set warning at 10%, and suspend to ram at 0%. It still has juice to power up and go on for a while after suspending <hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>cool, I'm still marvelling that at the lowest brightness setting with just the main battery at 100% and weightsaver in modular bay, the indicator says over 5 hours battery life left. So for around the house stuff, I never need the modular bay battery, but it's handy to have like next time I get called for jury duty I will be prepared! I bet at least one other prospective juror will be prompted to buy a fujitsu when they see how long I sit and surf.

-David

 

haha, yeh, also remember with Lion batteries, u'd want to fully empty it and recharge it full once every now and then. just to keep the batteries in shape

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*