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I bought my N140 less than a month ago. During the first days, the battery indicator was showing a staggering “11 hours”. But after recharging a few times (and tinkering with the battery options) the duration got much lower, about 6 hours. I tried to change back the battery options, to no avail.
Any other N140 user had a similar experiences ? It is possible that the 11 hour indication was simply a matter of battery mis-calibration. Or maybe the N140 is actually able to reach such a long battery duration ?
Samsugo – Try installing BatteryBar monitor as it is quite accurate and will give more reliable battery times than Windows.
Hope this helps
jeepers010, thanks for your suggestion. BatteryBar looks indeed more accurate than Windows, as it show several measures including battery wear. But it seems to me that BatteryBar (or at least, the free version I am using) predicts the remaining battery time without taking into account the current power load. In fact, when I stop using the netbook for a while, Windows reports, let’s say, 3 hours, than 6 hours and then 9 hours battery life, as soon as it switches to progressively lower power modes. At the same time, BatteryBar keeps showing the same time, eventually increasing it but very very slowly.
Beside this, what I was very curious to know is if others are experiencing a very long battery autonomy (say, above 9 hours) with their N140.
BatteryBar attempts to predict the amount of time left by recording your usage in the past, this way it can give you an accurate measure of how long on average you have left.
However if you usually use your netbook with just notepad open, then one day decide to play some games it will not be able to give you an accurate time remaining.
Whereas Windows inbuilt one as far as I’m aware only checks to see how fast the battery is running down over the last few minutes (seconds?) and gives you a time from that.
Really it’s not going to be possible to predict how long you have left accurately as the power consumption on a netbook can change dramatically depending on what you are doing on it at the time.
You could try using the netbook as you would normally and see how long it takes to go from 100% to say 75% and then times the length of time by 4. That should give you a rough estimate of what to expect. Though this is essentially what BatteryBar is trying to do.
Samsugo – Your welcome
I have found BatteryBar to be very accurate at determining the battery remaining time. If you cycle the battery down a few times it’s accuracy will improve as it learns the battery / power characteristics.
The Windows battery monitoring offering is poor as it tends to work ostensibly from seemingly instantaneous power readings and as such indications will fluctuate wildly depending on the power usage at the time the reading is taken.
BatteryBar appears to have quite a good algorithm and will predict and track the charge time remaining plus it will also calculate the re-charge time quite accurately as well.
On our NC10’s the predicted time will be accurate to within a few minutes.Extract from BatteryBar website….
Quote:BatteryBar constantly monitors the status of your battery as you use your laptop. As it monitors your battery, it keeps historical data on your battery and provide you with a very accurate estimate of how much time is remaining on your battery.All in all a very good and useful free application IMHO
Hope this helps
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