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back to article Skinny Acer notebook delivers six-day battery life

Acer appears to have found a solution to notebook users' battery life woes. Its Aspire Timeline 1810TZ apparently delivers a 10x improvement in runtime when compared to other thin'n'light laptops equipped with six-cell lithium-ion batteries. After five hours' usage at a day-long conference the other day, we thought we'd check …

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  1. Hedley Phillips

    Then again, it might just be a Windows 7 bug.

    I didn't think Windows 7 had any bugs?

    ;-)

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  2. Paul E

    Written I assume

    By the same people who did the time estimates for file copying...

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  3. Kevin Campbell

    Windows 7 bug?

    Oh, pshaw! [/dismissive wave]

    nudgenudge, winkwink

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  4. dave 81
    FAIL

    Damn you to Hades!

    It not being April 1st, I thought it you were serious when I clicked the headline!

    Oh well, Windblows 8 I am sure will have a fix for the Microsoft minute bug.

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  5. Tom 35

    By the same people who did the time estimates for file copying...

    I have a screen shot on my wall showing 5 million odd minutes left on a large copy. Only about 10 years left to go. (actual time about 3.5 hours)

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  6. Josh Cain
    Gates Halo

    It's not a bug...

    It's a feature!

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  7. Seantobin5

    My netbook

    I installed windows 7 ultimate on my eee pc 1005ha and it's advertised battery life is 10.5 hours but in windows 7, it says that I have 36 hours remaining at 15% so it is probably a bug. I mean if anythng, should Sony get the most battery life or asus? Acer is just a cheapo computer that delivers pretty much just what you need to do stuff on a computer...

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  8. Anonymous John

    What does the Power Saver option give?

    Tou may never need to charge it again.

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  9. Alan Esworthy
    Linux

    Hope you're OK

    Given that you couldn't possibly have written that without (a) laughing hysterically, and (b) having your tongue firmly in cheek, I sure hope you didn't bite yourself.

    Thanks for the grin!

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Seen this...

    ... I think it's to do with sleep mode, battery has drained very slowly whilst asleep so the calculation has two widely separated points in time with only small change between them. Used to see if when I resumed my EEE, would sort itself out after a few mins.

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  11. wayne 9
    Go

    A10 Thunderbolt

    My question is who on your staff has an A-10 Thunderbolt/Warthog as their wallpaper?

    Good choice.

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  12. windywoo
    Headmaster

    Bad calibration?

    Aren't you supposed to calibrate a battery's life in Windows by charging it to full, letting it run all the way to zero and sleep then charging again?

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  13. stewpot

    That's nothing

    I really hate it when Windows doesn't give you enough notice before the battery runs out. I got the following warning on my Dell, running Vista:

    "566hr 05min (12%) remaining"

    Yes, 23 days ought to do it!

    Shouldn't complain: according to that, when it's charged, my battery should keep going for 6 and a half months.

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  14. exit...quit...bye...quitbye.ctrl-C..ctrlX.ctrl-alt-X...aarrrr*slam*
    Happy

    A10 Thunderbolt

    Well that should be Lewis or...

    THE MODERATRIX.

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @windywoo

    No.

    You calibrate the battery that way (modern Lithium-Ion batteries have microprocessors) but not the OS. The battery wouldn't be reporting such a wacky value, so Windows is clearly ignoring it or applying their own twisted logic on top.

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @windywoo

    Did they guys in PC World tell you that?

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  17. JC 2
    Happy

    Might Be MS Spin

    It's the new era of virtualized time, Windows is SO much faster now, you can get 6 days worth of work done in 25 minutes. Not a bug, a feature is what that is.

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  18. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Gates Horns

    Wow

    That's just on the 'balanced' setting. What do you get under 'power saving' ? ; -)

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  19. eugene

    batteries forget

    @Anonymous Coward

    Batteries will not tell the computer how much runtime is left. They can tell the computer the current power consumption, how much power has been put back into the battery during the last charge, the battery's capacity, and stuff like that. The computer then calculates the runtime from that data. I've seen large numbers like that after coming out of standby, like the other AC mentioned. Fixes itself quickly.

    The full-charge-discharge calibration sequence is real - it might take a few months for a battery to reach you - the cells would have self-discharged a little. The battery's chip doesn't account for that, so a full discharge-recharge cycle will recalibrate it.

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  21. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @eugene

    To be fair I never said it provided a 'runtime' but since runtime is a very simple calculation of "power remaining / consumption" it's really neither here nor there. Windows is at fault here, it's an issue I've personally never seen with linux (or OSX on the rare occasions I've used it). Even if provided with incorrect values Windows would appear to be failing to apply any sort of sanity checking (par for the course with MS software), it would be more correct to display 'Unknown' than a runtime value which is clearly incorrect.

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  22. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Makes me think

    of the new mac ads - it wont have any of the problems my other os has - trust me...

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  23. Marvin the Martian

    65 hours in six days?

    There's me living 24h days, but apparently you computer types go to bed when it gets dark and don't recall/notice any changes when opening their eyes when the light slowly returns.

    "Hey that car parked in front of the neighbours tunneled away, never started up."

    Strange.

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