"Consider Replacing Your Battery"

well I went from 63% wear to 46%, going to do a few cycles of draining it full and a recharge. when I started this new charge it took almost 20 min before it registered 1% but the simple lights told me it was charging. I believe something software is not working correctly and even being a battery that doesn't have memory effect it sure seems to in this case.

I still have no clue what is causing this issue at least on my laptop. With the use it gets I would expect at least 10-15% wear. the readings I got 2 days ago was 12% wear, for it to jump so dramatically and now with a simple full cycle I have gained 17% battery capacity back that tells me something is seriously wrong. HP should be calling me about a replacement on Tuesday. Will see how that goes and if doing another complete charge and discharge gains or loses and wear.

I know there are a lot of very intelligent people on here and I think this might be a true issue I just don't know from where as I don't have the tools, spare parts etc to conduct a true test. I am going to start taking screen shots and if I can bring the wear back to 12% or even half of what it is now then its a legit issue and the next step of testing should be started.

Having read through the whole thread, there's more software involved than Windows 7 only. From where i stand now it seems to me all software between the battery Gauge Chip (ie: Texas Instruments BQ range) and windows 7 might add to the confusion.

To my knowledge, Windows 7 is the first Microsoft variant with native support for laptop battery life time tracking. Before it was the territory of external programs like NHC and BatMon. It seems the BIOS, ACPI functionality has never been tested properly over a wide range of laptop and laptop batteries.

Based on this Microsoft has made a pretty bold step forward by including this feature in Windows 7 - with the side effect of many issues - of which some seem to relate to Windows 7 and others to software like BIOS, ACPI and embedded software running in the laptop battery gauge chip and the MOBO microprocessor that controls the gauge chip.

UBUNTU (a popular LINUX variant) also has nifty battery life time tracking options, though also here there seems to be issue's not related to the tracking software itself.

In any case the best path is to get at least a 2nd opinion before ditching a laptop battery. Either through running windows XP, UBUNTU or doing a simple laptop battery test with a power meter available in hardware stores.

Cheers!

well just checked again and its down to 33% does this make sense to anyone? will do a few more later today and see how far I can drop it.

Having read quite a bit of laptop battery gauge chip specifications (Texas Instruments), battery calibration is known as "capacity learning".

The resulting Full Charge Capacity value is calculated based on a the "capacity learning" measurement and estimates of self-discharge of the cells, battery empty and full battery values. In theory the calculation can result in a fluctuating Full Charge Capacity. This is mentioned in gauge chip data sheets.

Doing multiple calibrations in a row can show these fluctuation. However it's strange to see large ones. Please note that "capcity learning" is intrusive - meaning the test influences the test result. Each full discharge wears the battery down.

Taking in account Full Charge Capacity value fluctuations on battery gauge chip level, it would not surprise me at all that values traveling upwards to Windows 7 level can go sour by BIOS, ACPI and embedded software driving the gauge chip.

At windows 7 level battery life time tacking gets values that fluctuate and maybe influenced by incorrect software in between.

I think the maturity of this function is low and needs more testing to get accurate readings for a wide range of laptops and laptop batteries.

Cheers!

can someone comment, explain or tell me that they don't find these readings at all strange? 100% untouched snip and the numbers well just don't add up. I have owned at least 5 laptops and not once did a battery die within its first 6 months of normal use. My last laptop an Acer ran 80% of its life on battery an when I sold it it still ran for 2 hours after 9 months owning it.

The lingering and unanswered question remains; Does Windows 7 cause laptop batteries to wear out faster compared to XP, Vista or Linux variants?

This regardless of values extracted from the laptop battery gauge chip. Since those seem quite unreliable to me due to immaturity of the feature.

The first thing that wears a battery out are recharge cycles, temperature and stress. Assuming W7 usage patterns for most are not significantly different (compared to using Vista/XP) I'd say W7 steps 'the tail' of the processor harder causing higher stress (battery discharge) between lower power sessions.

IMHO, running equal benchmarks on 'off-the-shelf' / virgin platforms as mentioned above would provide a more substantial answer.

A more simpler test would be to remove the laptop battery, let the laptop run on AC power with a peak power meter in between. If power peaks are lower on XP, Vista, Ubuntu it would explain higher laptop battery wear under W7.

Cheers!

logicearth said:

laptopnomad said:

The lingering and unanswered question remains; Does Windows 7 cause laptop batteries to wear out faster compared to XP, Vista or Linux variants?

The question has been answered many times. No.

The OS on the computer does not control the flow of electricity. The CPU requires the same amount of power to run, regardless. The hardware determines how much electricity needs to flow to each component, not the OS.

From Engineering Windows 7 - quote::

"The first step in reducing idle power is optimizing the amount of processor, memory and disk utilization. Reducing processor utilization is the most important, because the processor has a wide range of power consumption. When truly idle, the processor power consumption can be as low as 100-300mW. But, when fully busy, the processor can consume up to 35W. This large range means that even small amounts of processor activity can have a significant impact on overall power consumption and battery life."