Netbook News

Although some users have been grumbling about a variety of battery issues related to Windows 7, Microsoft says that its testing shows that nothing is amiss.
The software maker initially thought that there might be a problem with the firmware in some PC models causing an error message to appear where one was not warranted. However, Microsoft now says that it believes that the operating system is behaving properly.

In a blog posting on Monday, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky said that the company’s follow-up research shows that those seeing a notification that their batteries need replacing are getting the message because, in fact, the ibm laptop battery are not performing up to a certain threshold.

“To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state,” Sinofsky said. “In every case we have been able to identify the ibm thinkpad r50 battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.”

He noted that the error message is new to Windows 7, so people upgrading to Windows 7 may indeed see the message where no warning appeared before.

“We recognize that this has the ibm thinkpad r50e battery appearance of Windows 7 ‘causing’ the change in performance, but in reality all Windows 7 did was report what was already the case,” Sinofsky said.

The company and PC makers have received a total of 20 support inquiries related to this error message, all of which have turned out to be older batteries whose performance had degraded, he said. Although there have been complaints on Microsoft’s TechNet and other forums, Sinofsky said it has not seen anything in the cases it has followed up on to suggest anything other than the system correctly identifying underperforming batteries.

Sinofsky said it is actually seeing a smaller percentage of systems producing the error message than it had during the testing of Windows 7, in part because more and more new systems (with new ibm thinkpad r50p battery) are running the operating system.

“Only a very small percentage of users are receiving the ‘Consider replacing your battery’ notification, and as expected, we are seeing systems older than (around) 1.5 years,” he said.

MSI  just keeps breeding that Wind family. Today the Taiwanese company unveiled it Wind U110 ECO, which sports a similar chassis to the Wind U115 but is slated to get 9 hours of battery life.

Using Intel’s Menlow Atom family of processors (the 1.6GHz Atom Z530), which is optimized for Satellite A100 battery savings,  and a higher capacity battery, MSI is confident that the ECO will be one of the longest running netbooks on the track.

Other than its predicted Satellite A105 battery capabilities the 10-inch LED Backlit U110 ECO has the run of the mill netbook specs including an 1GB of RAM and Windows XP. It will have a US15 chipset which uses Intel’s GMA 500 graphics.  Early reports indicated that it would have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer’s display.

Learn Moregraphics card. Andy Tung of MSI confirmed this was a misprint on the company’s Website.

Similar to the U100 it has a 4-in-1 card reader, 3 USB, Ethernet, mic and headphone jacks.  It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera, Satellite A80 battery, Satellite M100 battery,Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g/n options. According to MSI U.S. they are undecided at the moment if the U100 ECO will hit domestic shores.

Panasonic announced on Tuesday that the company has begun manufacturing a new, safer laptop battery, which will hopefully reduce the number of battery recalls we have seen in recent years.

Numerous companies, including Packard Bell, HP, Dell, Sony,and others, have recalled laptop batteries due to them posing a fire hazard. Panasonic’s new battery design hopes to reduce the risk of batteries short-circuiting and leading to a fire.

The new standard-size battery design (pictured) makes use of a new metal oxide layer placed in between the Sony VGP-BPS9 battery’s cathode and anode. Acting as an insulator, the new metal layer keeps the battery from overheating should it short-circuit.

Panasonic’s new design is not only safer, it also has a longer run time. Battery cells found in laptops currently store an average of 2.9Ah per cell, whereas the improved cells can now store 3.1Ah of power.Sony VGP-BPS9/B,Sony VGP-BPS9/S，Sony VGP-BPS9A，Sony VGP-BPS9A/B.