Acer :: Timeline 4810 Win7 Battery (and Other)

For the past 5 months that ive owned m laptop, i have been running the Windows 7 RC.

However, given that i will be leaving the country for the next four months (during which time my RC license will expire) i did a clean install to an RTM (retail) copy of windows 7 ultimate 64 a few days ago. Since then, ive noticed some bothersome issues:

battery life is fluctuating heavily, and the predictions are nowhere near as high as they used to be (with the win7 RC i got 7 hours or so in practical use)

the Launch Manager software is not really working, when i unplug i dont see the battery logo come up on screen like i used to when i unplug, and instead get random changes in brightness and beep sounds when nothing seems to be happening (i think thats related to the optical drive management software) the other touch buttons, like wifi do show a logo on screen when clicked, but the battery button does not.

in the time i have spent writing this post, the battery indicator has predicted 5 hours, 5 hours 30 min, 7 hours 30 min, and 6 hours, all between 85 and 83%. i know it fluctuates some because its calculated based on usage, but this is way more than it ever did before.

in addition i cant install the VGA drivers from acer because it says my computer doesnt meet the minimum specs when i try to install.