Acer Aspire V5-122P battery?

Cuby

Hi to all,

I found and reinstalled an old Aspire V5, which works ok, but of course, battery is shot. Having had many laptops and battery changes over the years, one constant remains: no battery gives optimal performance and predectible degradation except OEM's one.

Since nor SNID or S/N is recognized anymore by Acer repair page, how much would Acer sell spare battery for?

JackE

Sorry. ACER doesn't manufacture batteries. They use batteries made by Panasonic, Sony, LiteON, Sanyo, etc. Sometimes they re-label with the

ACER logo. Google the ACER part no. for your model KT.00303.005. As you will discover, this part can be from any of the above manufacturers and probably a few others.

 

JackE

Google search keywords 'v5-122P' & 'battery' for vendors who ship new replacement batteries to your location. Should be about $35USD.

Cuby

That's precisely what I don't want to do. Having gone through many third-party batteries on various computers, they all tended to completely fail after a ridiculously low cycle number (12 to 45). Hence my specifically requesting original Acer battery.

JackE

Sorry. ACER doesn't manufacture batteries. They use batteries made by Panasonic, Sony, LiteON, Sanyo, etc. Sometimes they re-label with the

ACER logo. Google the ACER part no. for your model KT.00303.005. As you will discover, this part can be from any of the above manufacturers and probably a few others.

 

Cuby

Ok thanks. Now I'm thinking about the low-performing AMD A4-1250, maybe it would be an option to simply swap the motherboard. Some options I was thinking about:

Replace with a V5-122P motherboard but featuring the A6-1450 CPU

Replace with a V5-132P motherboard, featuring the i3 CPU.

In the latter case, is the 132P motherboard drop-in compatible with the 122P chassis?

JackE

While both seem to have the same physical form factors, the perceived real-world performance gains relative to the A4 will probably be underwhelming partly due to RAM limitations. The biggest speed bang for the buck would be to replace the HDD with an SSD and add a 4GB module if you haven't so already. 

Cuby

SSD already included (already had a small one sitting in a drawer), though I still haven't upgraded the RAM since I couldn't yet justify the expense (nor for an OEM battery), largely because of the underwhelming CPU performance. True, with only a few tabs open, system stands at 92% RAM usage and 25% CPU, about 15 min after boot, even by aggressively closing and unloading unneeded tabs. Unusable before that time. I disabled automatic updates since the CPU seemingly can't cope with the even light load of keeping a few tabs open, Word and Windows updates running in the background.

On paper, the A6 is twice as powerful as the A4, as is the i3. Would the RAM be the only limiting factor remaining? Or is the cooling system simply too small for a 8W CPU (A4, A6), let alone a 15W one (i3?)

JackE

I'd go for the 4GB RAM module at less than $30. If the machine is early Win10 vintage with later BIOS hardware --- about 5 years old --- you might be able to get away with adding up to 8GB. Go to this link for options. As for the other CPUs & mainboards, I think you risk opening up a costly can-o'-worms for not that much gain in real world performance from what was fundamentally a budget laptop in the early Win8 era.

Cuby

True, most people wouldn't invest a dime in an 8-year-old PC, but I usually try to extract as much useful life as possible from any device through upgrades. My main computer is 9-year old, secondary ones 11-year old (though they wouldn't have been considered "budget" in their eras). Not sure many people keep using their computers for that long.

To restore its mobility, it would also require a $30 to $40 battery. Sure, while many cells are usually made by a few manufacturers, there are plenty of sub-par Chinese manufacturers who don't quite master the process of making a Li-Ion cell that lasts a few hundred cycle, or a BMS that doesn't kill the battery prematurely.

Do you mean the later Win 10 releases actually restricted maximum supported RAM? AFAIK this V5 runs Win 10 Home (Single Language Edition, if that matters), and I remember updating the firmware to the latest version in a previous attempt to have a working tri-boot computer. If so, I could reformat it to an older Windows 10, though I'm still unsure if / how to lock Win 10 Home version.

Thoughts?

JackE

>>>Do you mean the later Win 10 releases actually restricted maximum supported RAM? >>>

No. The BIOS firmware is the bottleneck, not Windows

Cuby

So with the latest BIOS (2.12), an 8GB stick should work?

JackE

4GB should work with any firmware for the 122P. 8GB will likely work but only recognized as 4GB . 2.12/2.10 are not a major changes. Certainly not worth the risk of bricking an otherwise functional BIOS chip.  So the recognizable max is likely to be 6GB with the 2GB soldered RAM.

Cuby

Back to the V5-122P:

I installed a Patriot-branded module reference PSD38G1600L2S, same specs as the Corsair one. Didn't take the Corsair/Crucial since Patriot happened to be cheaper and closer to me (Canada) than the Corsair/Crucial (China). Somewhat surprisingly, the Patriot uses the same RAM chip brand as the removed Kingston module (Nanya), both modules come with a lifetime warranty. Cost about $45

A pleasant surprise: Windows does see 10GiB RAM, of which 9.45GiB is usable, on BIOS 2.12. So far, no crash or freeze. However, it didn't appear to make the computer much faster.

BTW, a supposedly genuine Sanyo battery for this model is around $70. Worth it?

JackE

Congrats. No, probably not worth $70 for a battery just because it has a Sanyo label. Google search the keywords 'v5-122p' & 'battery' for a vendor you trust with whatever label is on the vendor's battery. Shouldn't be more than about $35usd.

Cuby

A few month down the road!

I now have a half-decent mini laptop able to do light tasks. It  runs MS Office and Firefox (no more than 10 tabs) and Zoom (barely).

However, the main issue isn't much the low power, but the poor task prioritization performed by Windows 10 Home. As soon as I start it, Windows Update immediately kicks in until the updates are done, which can take north of 15-30 minutes, depending on their size, plus Windows Defender starts its scan, to the same effect. Plus, for reasons I still can't understand, it has a strong tendency to create BSoD. Plus, the 128GB SSD running it appears to have quite low performance (Task Manager reports 100% usage time with only 21MB/s R/W).

One way to avoid that would be to leave it turned on, but due to its annoying whining fan noise, I can't.

The other way would be to tweak a light Linux install on it, but I need integration into a Windows ecosystem, so that's excluded as well. Web version of Office is a power hog.

The last way I was thinking, ¿Can Windows 10 Home be set to only look for updates / scan for malwares at a predefined time, and not every time I wake it up? The way I understand the CPU is that it is able to do its job at a leisurely pace, but sucks as multitasking.

JackE

>>>As soon as I start it, Windows Update immediately kicks in until the updates are done, which can take north of 15-30 minutes,>>>

Right click wifi icon in right tray. Open network & internet settings. Click properties button for wifi. Scroll down and turn on metered connection. When you're ready to do updates, turn metered connection off.

Cuby

That's indeed one simple trick, but I will probably forget to set it back to unmetered. So Win 10 Home can't run the update cycle at a fixed moment in the week, say, automatically wake up on a Monday at 3AM, and apply urgent updates if it is plugged in, then go back to sleep until 7AM?

In other words, is Win 10 Home the most suitable edition for such a low-powered laptop?

I'm asking because our institution customised a Win 10 Enterprise on laptops lent to students during exams. They have pretty good hardware, and almost nothing is run on startup, yet no applications are blocked. Makes them lightning fast, near silent, yet can hold about 7 hours on battery with max brightness on a 15.6". Pretty much the opposite of library-issued laptops; same models, but a bloated config with TONS of tasks running in the background.

I mean, if customization options are so few in Win 10 Home, wouldn't a customised Win 10 Pro be lighter, despite all the added features?

JackE

On the check for updates menu, you can either pause update for 7 days or you can change active hours during which time updates won't be applied. 

Cuby

In fact, that's one of the first thing I did, knowing that otherwise Win 10 Home had a knack for choosing the most inappropriate moment for installing its updates. However I'm not referring to installation, but merely looking for and downloading updates before actually installing them. And of course the Windows Defender scan that kicks in at the same time.

With a good CPU / SSD pair, these processes almost can't be felt, but with the A4 CPU and an unexpected bottleneck at the SSD, it slows the computer down to a crawl.

Updates can be prevented from downloading with a "metered connection" setting, but it's likely the user will forget to set it back to "normal connection".

Updates can be prevented from installing for 7 days or using the active hours settings, but these can only work so much when irregular work schedule is expected. It's easier to find the one spot in the week where the user won't be working than to rely on a regular schedule.

Hence my questions:

Is there a way to add permanent exceptions to Windows Defender so that it stops breaking up my jailbreak apps?

And only allow it to scan during off-periods, waking up the computer if necessary?

is Win 10 Home finally the right Windows edition for such customization?

JackE

>>>is Win 10 Home finally the right Windows edition for such customization?>>>

Probably not. And I doubt another Windows edition shown in this link can give you that flexibility either. While the complaints therein might be a few years old, Microsoft has done little if anything to address them. In fact, their update policies seem more inflexible and invasive at firmware levels. 

I used to manage a network that had exactly the kind of user-controllable update services that you're looking for. But it was based on the last halfway decent Windows version Win7. The network ultimately had to be changed to Mint Cinnamon not only for superior update flexibility but because the updates themselves, esp kernels, are more predictable, reliable and much less likely to cause adverse often disabling network side effects.  I'm definitely not as anxious as I once was with major Windows updatesl. And you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between Mint and the Windows GUIs as to form, function, speed & interoperability with folks still mired in Windows.

Cuby

If only MS Office wasn't a requirement, I'd jump in a heartbeat…

On the one hand I understand Microsoft's strategy to take the updates burden out of home user's hands (back in the XP days, people indefinitely postponed or never updated, and that's why XP got a bad rep as far as security is concerned). But on the other, I can't help but think MS got their algorithm wrong, seeing how many student's computers decide to install large updates right when the exam is supposed to start. And now, my admittedly rare case where CPU power is insufficient for proper multitask management.

My other computer (older, but ironically more powerful) runs Ubuntu Mate as its primary OS with its own bugs and quirks, but updates isn't one of them, another one is a Mac, so GUI isn't the greatest concern. But I can't use it comfortably with MS Office.

From the link, Win 10 Pro/Edu/Entreprise would allow some control over when to install updates, and when to look for them (I recall there was a Group policy option that needed to be set). But can it be lighter to run than Home without extensive customization? I mean, no much point in restricting update windows if it's slower all day long, is it?