Notebook Battery question

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Executioner
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Notebook Battery question

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I have an Asus Q400a notebook that my son gave me. It had a cracked LCD screen which I replaced and the notebook is working fine with Windows 8.1 installed. Since my son had it for 2+ years, I decided to buy a replacement battery. I charged the battery to 100%, then turned off the notebook and stored it in my closet. I pulled it out 2 months later, only to discover that the battery is dead at 0% capacity which is probably not good for these batteries.

I have also other Dell laptops in my closet, and if I pull one of those out after sitting in storage for 3 months, the battery is at 95%, which is what I would expect. So is this something with the Asus notebook and not the battery? Right now, I have both batteries fully charged and removed from the laptop. I'm going to wait a few weeks, then put one back in and see if it holds a charge close to capacity.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I think you're expecting too much. If you have a battery that maintains a 95% charge after 3 months at room temp, that's an awesome battery, unless you keep it in a cool area.

Pro tip: I store batteries I'm not using in a fridge. They'll last longer and maintain a charge for a long time, although it's healthier to discharge them to 50% before refrigerating. I have phones in my fridge that are 3 years old and still have half a charge.

My laptops rarely hold a charge for more than a month or two.

Temperature is important also. My car laptop is dead in a couple of weeks without a charge due to the heat.

Now it's also possible the laptop is draining the battery. The laptop is never completely off. There's a small trickle to keep the power circuit running. So yeah, try pulling the battery and see if it's any better. Maybe the laptop gas a faulty power or charge circuit that's bleeding power.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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BTW: if you want yo dtore
not sure exactly what this means...
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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Ignore. I hate typing essays on my phone :)
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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All the laptops with the batteries are stored in my closet inside the house. The temperature never goes any higher than 76 Deg F. I think there may be some kind of trickle drain. I have 3 batteries for this notebook, and all 3 do the same thing if left in the notebook. So far, I'm not impressed with Asus notebook. The notebook seems very fragile to me. Not like the Dell's or even the Thinkpads which are rock solid.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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There might be a firmware upgrade that fixes it.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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I got a new Dell from work about 4 months ago. I put it away, fully charged back then. I actually needed to use it last night while being on call to cover for someone. After some 3 to 4 months of sitting in the bag, untouched, it had almost a full charge. I was ready to plug it in and was surprised to see it was still almost fully charged. I left it sitting on the table so I could deplete it and recharge it. Damn! The screen was on the whole time, idle, and it was still running for like 5 hours before it died.

I'm impressed with it.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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Losbot wrote:I got a new Dell from work about 4 months ago. I put it away, fully charged back then. I actually needed to use it last night while being on call to cover for someone. After some 3 to 4 months of sitting in the bag, untouched, it had almost a full charge. I was ready to plug it in and was surprised to see it was still almost fully charged. I left it sitting on the table so I could deplete it and recharge it. Damn! The screen was on the whole time, idle, and it was still running for like 5 hours before it died.

I'm impressed with it.
This...

I expected that the battery would be in the 90% capacity range. I'm going to check for a BIOS update as FP suggested to see it make a difference.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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The notebook as the latest BIOS version already installed. I did though go through the minimal BIOS settings to see what things were set at. One of the settings I disabled is:

Power Off Energy Savings - disabled
When enabled the system power consumption can be reduced at power off state. The wake up capability might not workable.

Wake on Lid Open - disabled

I'm going to let the laptop sit with a fully charged 100% battery for a week and recheck next Thursday/Friday. That sentence is directly from the bios screen "might not workable" LOL.
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Re: Notebook Battery question

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I checked the battery today and it was at 60%. So I guess I'll have to leave the battery out. The other batteries are still fully charged that were not placed in the notebook.
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