My Battery Is Shot - Lucky Me!

So I bought this Acer 771G notebook back in 2012, that means that this computer is almost 5 years old. Most computers become outdated after that amount of time, however, unless your a hardcore gamer, most people don't replace their computers till they are 10 years old. With a desktop machine there is room for expandability beyond memory and hard drive, which can allow you to get another 5 years out of your machine. But with a notebook, all you can upgrade is the hard drive and the memory and thats it, which means, your notebook will be outdated so fast lol.

Well anyways, my notebook battery was only used maybe two times, I mean from full charge to fully discharged. This is because I have been using it all these years mostly as a desktop machine. Once I got my first tablet computer, there really isn't much need to carry around a 7 pound computer! Well, the power cable has stayed in the notebook this whole time, and I never learned about battery calibration. You'd think if battery calibration was that important, they would tell consumers all about it, but I never heard a thing.

So lucky me, my battery is toast. So how did I find out about this you ask? Well, if you read my review on Zorin in the Chat About Zorin forum, you would have noticed I spoke about the Power app built into settings that shows the current charge of your devices, including the notebook battery. The other day it was showing 100%, but after a few computer restarts, I discovered this......



So I did some research to find an app that would give me more information about my battery, and I discovered power statistics, which can be installed via the software center. It shows proof that the battery in my notebook is uncapable of charging any longer, which is why the orange light on the front of my notebook keeps blinking endlessly.



Thank goodness I use this notebook as a desktop, cause its useless as a portable device now. lol

Useful utilities for GNU/Linux users are:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-inc ... tlp-linux/

An out-of-date article as the pics are missing:

http://www.howtogeek.com/55185/how-to-m ... ux-laptop/

Well worth a read:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/choose-bes ... nuxubuntu/

Thanks for the links as always. But two things I won't do, I won't use power saving features on my notebook, as long as the cable stays plugged in, I'd like to try and get full performance out of the notebook when I can, and if I am not running off of the battery, that wouldn't be an issue. Also, I am running an SSD drive, never ever use hibernation or sleep features with an SSD drive, as these modes for some reason create an unbelievable amount of unnecessary writes to the hard drive during that period. However, I did find those articles interesting reads so thankyou anyways. I just wish sites like those would quit it with all the bloody adds. I swear the internet is getting more and more bloated each year, all the way to the point where even a Quad Core I7 machine with a 29MB internet connection ends up getting bogged down. lol

If you don't want advertisements:

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

Hello Zorin Group!

I just wanted to update everyone and let you guys know that my new battery came. I took the opportunity to clean out my notebook, as well as the notebook cooler before replacing the battery. Gosh these things are small, I remember a time when a battery would weigh 5 pounds! Look at the screenshot to see much better results now, imagine that, a battery that actually is charging, what a relief!

Glad to hear it is working!

Now if I can just remember to stop forgetting to charge my g700 mouse battery when I go to bed, that be good lol

Btw swarf, I ordered a mediasonic probox 4 bay external 3.5 drive bay enclosure, which will be arriving today soon. I will put my backup storage drive in it and plug it into my router, which will turn it into a low power file server on the network! My old file server was using at least 300 watts of power, plus another 100 watts for 22 inch crt monitor. External enclosure uses a 60 watt PSU. So this whole ordeal ended up being a win win after all.

Glad to hear!