£10 Battery Upgrade For UK Eee PC 900 Owners

Ken E. writes "Asus has backed down in the face of complaints from UK Eee PC 900 owners about the ultra-portable's low-capacity battery. Confusing statements posted in online reviews led buyers to believe that they would get a larger capacity battery than they actually did — and they weren't happy. Asus has, however, made a conciliatory gesture by extending a £10 high-capacity battery upgrade offer. Mobile Computer has the full announcement, plus quite a bit of background on how this fuss all got started. The batteries will be available June 10 and in the meantime Eee PC owners can download a BIOS update that Asus claims will add half an hour to battery life."

genius.

[Brian Gordon]

unlimited [wikipedia.org] battery life.. just keep downloading BIOS updates to add half hours to your battery life..

Re:

[Enderandrew]

Just like the endless litany of products guaranteed to take strokes off your golf game. Buy enough, and your scores will be low enough to beat Tiger Woods.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the money I've sank into that stuff, I calculate that my next game will be coming in at -5 strokes.

Re:genius.

[Opportunist]

Buy some more and you needn't play at all anymore!

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[base3]

I've got practically infinite disk space on my old 486, because I ran multiple copies of Stacker :).

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[RealGrouchy]

Alternate technique [wikipedia.org] for never having your battery die on you mid-use.

- RG>

Oh, 10 pounds sterling, not 10 lbs!

[Equuleus42]

I caught the RSS title of this story and it appeared that Asus is making a 10 pound heavy battery! I thought for a second that luggables were making a comeback!

Re:Oh, 10 pounds sterling, not 10 lbs!

[Stormwatch]

Oh, you gringos and your funny non-metric measurement systems...

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Yes, because the brits always use metric measurements for everything. How many stone do you weigh again?

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[alx5000]

Between two or three *whoos*es per square inch. Per fortnight.

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[Scuzzm0nkey]

How many Leagues away from work do you live?

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[You ain't seen me!]

Yes, because the brits always use metric measurements for everything. How many stone do you weigh again?

No, us Brits use both measurements at the same time. Thats why we always have a slightly confused look on our face. For example we buy litres of petrol (if we can afford it), but measure our usage in gallons, and I'm 5ft 11in but weigh 75Kg and so on.

Can you just buy a second battery

[hkmarks]

Can you just buy a second battery for a discounted price? That would be a not-terribly-crazy alternative.

MiyEee PC runs just fine

[wildem]

I've no business attachment with Asus, but I have to say I couldn't be happier about the battery life of my Eee PC. Just today, I was using it for more than 3 hours for surfing the net, mplayer music playback, and occasional web video. I still had 30% juice left according to Ubuntu's battery state widget.

Re:MiyEee PC runs just fine

[Shadow-isoHunt]

I've got a 1.2ghz p3(latitude c610) that gets 14+ hours on two 66whr batteries w/ a 1500x1050LCD, so color me unimpressed.

Re:

[quinks]

If you want something that's just a step up from an Eee PC, get a Latitude C610. I had a C600 whose hinge broke after ages and got a broken C610 and did a transplant. And being able to have two batteries in there in place of the CD/DVD-drive slot is just badass. The C600 was free and the broken eBay C610 cost $50. Just over 1 kg, 14-inch screen. Some of the stuff is showing its age, like the single USB1 port, but with a PCMCIA card, that's no problem either. But one thing baffles me, I've never been able

Re:

[Shadow-isoHunt]

The batteries are 8 cell 66whrs intended for the c640(the p4 version of the c610), the screen was on it's lowest brightness level during that time and was left alone a few times so I could use the bathroom and do some other things. At the time I was running speedswitch XP w/ it set to dynamic switching. I've never done a full drain running linux, but being that it's simple speedstep I've got a feeling linux would do fine. Backtrack was running in vmware at this time, and winamp was playing(I have it set to

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[Shadow-isoHunt]

Oh, and, i8kfangui to keep the big fan on low at all times.

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[The_Wilschon]

It might not get so hot if you didn't turn the fan all the way down all the time. I'd rather lose a little bit of battery life than a little bit of CPU life...

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[Shadow-isoHunt]

No, you don't get it. The c610 will keep it's fan off until like 160f, and then turn 1 and 2 on high until like 130f, then they go off. Using i8kfangui I keep the big fan (2) on at all times, so I idle at 140 instead of reaching that 160f idle. If the temperature increases, the fan speed increases(as I8K allows you to set thresholds) and I kick on the second fan.

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[You ain't seen me!]

And being able to have two batteries in there in place of the CD/DVD-drive slot is just badass.

I did the same, but in use the first battery was constantly being used whilst the second was just idle. Eventually the second battery became an overcooked brick. I could have got round this by swapping the batteries between slots now and again, but unless you intend running both batteries down completely between recharge it can end up as a waste of a battery.

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[wildem]

I hear the 8-cell battery gets up to 4 hours on these latitudes, so how can you get 14 + while doing any real work on it?

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[MrMr]

You redefine 'real work'.
It's a '1+1=3, for sufficiently large values of 1'- type of thing

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[Jeff DeMaagd]

And what does that computer weigh, including both batteries?

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[quinks]

Typo. 1960 grams without CD drive or battery. Batteries weigh 410 grams, CD-ROM drive is 266 grams. I've got an eee PC here, and it is a lot lighter at just under a kg. :(

Re:MiyEee PC runs just fine

[debatem1]

1960 + 410 = 2370g
eee pc = 990g
I'm guessing that the eee pc battery weighs ~250g.
Given that each battery gives the eee pc ~3 hours of battery life, that gives the eee pc about 18 hours of battery life before it exceeds those weight specifications.

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[quinks]

Well, the original iBook had an advertised battery life of 6 hours. And I'd really like to know shadow-isohunt's OS if he can get 7 hours of battery life. To convert, that's 9.2 Watts of Power that shadow-isohunt's laptop draws. I've never managed to get it much below 11 Watts. What I'd like to know is where he can get 2 less Watt on the same Hardware with mostly the same software.

For reference, 12 Watt is standard under light use. With a bit of Googling I see that the Eee PC draws up to 22-or-so Watt, wi

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[CastrTroy]

Well, my full sized laptop, with actual spinning platter hard drive, and 14 inch screen only draws around 18 watts. And on a single battery lasts about 2.5 hours. The biggest advantage of the eeePC is the size, and the fact that it's solid state. You could easily get a laptop with a lot more battery life.

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[Anonymous Coward]

But is yours a 900 with a 4400mAh battery?

People living elsewhere got higher-capacity batteries.

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[daybot]

I've no business attachment with Asus, but I have to say I couldn't be happier about the battery life of my Eee PC. Just today, I was using it for more than 3 hours for surfing the net, mplayer music playback, and occasional web video. I still had 30% juice left according to Ubuntu's battery state widget.

I guess it's subjective. I looked at the Eee PC but the battery life was a deal-breaker. I know the Eee PC is excellent value and Toughbooks [panasonic.com] aren't, but Panasonic's ultraportable options of 7 (CF-W7), 9 (CF-T7) or 12 (CF-T5 - discontinued) hours set the benchmark that the subnotebooks will need to meet before I buy one.

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[StackedCrooked]

Have a nice day.

I guess yours wasn't.

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[Anonymous Coward]

From my personal experience, the battery widget on Ubuntu is not a completely reliable source... it's more of a ballpark guestimate at best. In particular, the drain it reports doesn't appear to be particularly linear, especially once you get to 20% and below, at that point it starts to "drain" faster and faster.

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[MrMr]

Perhaps the widget is actually correct?
Check out the discharge behaviour of NiMH under serious load for instance:
http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm#nimh [powerstream.com]

Something fishy inthe state of Asus

[JohnBailey]

It seems that Asus have been mucking about with the pricing and spec on the 900 in different countries. The higher price for Australian Eee users who want Linux defended as a charge for the extra capacity drive, but the same price for both models elsewhere, the lower battery power in the UK being justified by the two year warranty, who knows what is next.

Perhaps they do this with all their products, and the Eee is just so carefully watched that it gets much more attention. But it looks like they have a product they haven't quite figured out how to price.

Kudos to Asus

[capnkr]

...for hearing what the customers and public are saying, and...

Paying Attention to us.

It's a win-win situation; we get happy, they get good street cred - we stay happy, they keep making money.

Refreshing, when most manufacturers like to backpedal and deny.

Kudos to Asus.

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[frosty_tsm]

I measure productivity by check-ins per hour [thedailywtf.com]. It's way more effective.

(I really wished I could have done separate posts, but I feared the mods / admins would strike me down)

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[cp.tar]

I just spent all of my mod points, so here's a virtual +1 Hilarious.

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[Slashdot Suxxors]

And what's the price on a brand new one of those?

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[frosty_tsm]

And doesn't it weigh a lot more?

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[MrMr]

Oh, did I tell you it's waterproof, shockproof and crush resistant, too?
Ok, I'll take up your challenge; hand over your Panasonic CF-M34 now.

Reasonable Compromise

[blank89]

I think they've done a pretty good job in general with the Eee. I would be happy to get 2 hours of battery life on my shitty hp laptop with Linux on it.

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[ipsi]

I'd be happy to get 2 pages of printing out of my battery.

It's four years old, and spends most of its time plugged into AC, which can't be doing good things for the battery.

what we really want to know...

[advocate_one]

is just how many of those little beauties they've actually sold... after all, there has to be some real reason why Microsoft suddenly blinked and allowed the OEMs to carry on making devices with XP on them...

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[cp.tar]

You mean, besides the fact that by the time Vista booted on one of them, the battery would have died...
Oh, so is that the reason for the battery upgrade?

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[replicant108]

"The company has forecast Eee PC shipments at around 5 million units this year. Based on the 6-to-4 ratio the company predicts, Asus could ship around 3 million Windows Eee PCs and 2 million Linux ones."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9068258 [computerworld.com]

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[SoTerrified]

"Based on the 6-to-4 ratio the company predicts"

I have an insider, a buddy who works at ASUS. And he swears to me that despite the media quoting a "6-to-4 ratio", inside the company they really expect a 3 to 2 ratio. But you didn't hear that from me...

Return the battery?

[kernowyon]

I cannot see why Asus don't simply ask the 900 owners to send in proof of purchase (receipt or whatever) and £10 to get the new battery pack. What is the idea behind requesting owners to send back their original battery to get an exchange? It would end up with Asus having a stockpile of old, "pre-used" batteries which they then need to dispose of. Or are they planning to re-sell these in "refurbished" machines at some point?
At the moment, Asus have a great lead in the market - the other cheap UMPCs a