Battery is erratic

Hello,

Recently received an Aspire One, and I'm wondering why my battery is acting so erratically. First off, I'm just using the device for the Internet, and at full charge, the battery meter says I'm only receiving 4 hours of use time. I have the 6 cell battery under Windows XP, and I was under the impression from the reviews that this battery would give me 7 hours of life.

The second problem I'm having is that I'll look at the battery meter one minute, and it'll say I have 4 hours left. Five minutes later, I'll look at it again, and it'll say I have 3 hours and 15 minutes left. Then I'll look 5 minutes later, and it'll say I have 3:45 left. What the heck is going on with the battery? I don't understand why it's jumping all over the place, and why it's only giving me 7 hours of charge.

 

I would suspect that the fluctuations in the battery reading are based on a baseline power usage vs high power usage. The battery meter is updating the run time based on how much power you are using at any given time. When the computer goes back to idle, the power duration goes back up.

I experienced this same thing yesterday when I borrowed a 6 cell from another person. (I have a 3 cell and hadn't noticed this phenomena before.)

I would say that this is normal.

PS. Yesterday was the 1st time I had actually played with the 6 cell. I'm personally going to pass on it. I like the look and the weight of the AAO with the 3 cell. The 6 cell adds a noticeable weight to the laptop. It's not a lot but it is noticeable. I also noticed that the 6 cell doesn't come with a leather sleeve like my 3 cell did.

 

People who can get 7 hours off the 5200mah are pretty rare. I can only get around 6 hours normally, and that's with everything turned off/low except for the wifi.

Battery life is very dependent on many things. I average probably around 5.5 hours but I also do alot of extra stuff on the aao that isn't just web surfing all the time. If you have system restore or something else that always runs in the background and reads/writes to the hard disk, this will lower the runtime. LCD brightness not so much but it can make a small difference. Hard disk power as well, the hitachi that mine came with drew more power than the Seagate that has replaced it. I've noticed about 15 minutes more on 3cell with the Seagate.