Quote:
Originally Posted by FanIn80
Well on the bright side, at least you saved some money buying an Acer.
...well 20% of the bright side anyway.
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I will always buy an Acer over an Apple any day...
Because I'm a giant cheap-ass and don't mind if the entire thing crashes and corrupts it's own bios and I have to figure out how to manually reflash it myself (real Acer netbook experience) because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
As far as battery life on netbooks, it also depends on the size of your battery. Some Acer netbooks are only 3 cell and some are 6 cell or greater. Which one do you have? Also, you will never get the listed battery life out of a netbook on the balanced setting. You have to have it on maximum battery setting.
And no, that doesn't turn your computer into an oversized clock. Maximum battery with WiFi on is perfectly good for surfing the internet and that's what I use most of the time when I am away from a power jack. I used to do that at school and managed to squeeze 6 hours of lectures out of a laptop that way. Your computer will downclock your CPU speed, lower screen brightness to the lowest (which I always find is still perfectly visible in most indoor settings), etc. but netbooks are pretty agile and even at this speed, the internet and office programs work just fine.
You can also do little tweaks like getting programs to override the bios fan control so the fan spins up less often which will give you slightly more life over 6-8 hours. I use that on my Acer netbook but mainly to keep it quiter than to save power.
I don't know if your netbook has this feature but many expensive laptops like Lenovo business laptops have smart battery charging where it doesn't trickle charge the battery until it drops down to 30%. Remember with cheaper note/netbooks that might not have these features to never leave the laptop plugged in all the time (like overnight) because slow trickle charge and heat can kill battery life quickly (happened to the EeePC of a friend) and to never let the Lithium Ion battery fully discharge. Recharge at 30%. If you need to leave it plugged in for a long time and the battery is full, remove the battery first. On my netbooks, once the battery is full and if I know I'm not going anywhere for awhile, I pop out the battery.