Jingtian Wang

Thanks for that!! I think I'm just gonna tolerate this quirk....

I've noticed something odd that's been on going with my PC and Laptop. My PC (2015 ish) was purchased in China and shipped to Germany, and came with a weird limited trail version of windows that expired after 90 days, so I did a fresh windows install and set the system languages to English during installation, so the system language for my PC has always been English, with Chinese and German as alternative keyboard layouts & second languages. My laptop (2019) was purchased in Germany and came with a normal windows installation, I changed the default language to English during setup and again with Chinese and German as alternative keyboard layouts & secondary languages. I've been noticing that both computers seems to have a "native language", with Chinese (any maybe also German, but I'm not sure) being often displayed on the lock screen and update screen of my PC, and the same with German on my laptop. Despite English being on the top of their preferred language list. Has anyone else experienced something similar? This doesn't really affect me since I never read anything on my lock screen, but it does make me curious as to why this happens. Is there a chip on the motherboard that tells the computer "where they're originally from?"

That's one of my later theories Unpopular opinion: I actually would prefer that since I never use nearly 100% of cpu, sticking mostly to word and chrome. I think the right thing it for windows to give us option. Like a throttled mode to conserve battery for casual users. But I think this might need a case by case code, which I doubt windows/android manufactures would like to do knowing their altitude to supporting their device.

First, let me clarify that this is only a theory, based purely on my personal observation. I don't have quantitative evidence to back my theory up, which is why I hope that someone who has experience in electronic engineering or batteries can expand on my suspescion. I think that for one reason or another, apple manages to maintain the battery life of their devices to be way more consistent than android/windows devices. From my observation of my own devices and the devices of the people around me, the battery in apple devices tend to age far better. For example, my iPad air 2 purchased in April 2015 is still able to hold a very respectable few hour of battery, while a older Samsung galaxy tab started it's 30 minute battery life around it's 5 year mark. It's is true that the samsung tab is few years older than my ipad and hence it's possible that the iPad has newer battery technology, but this shouldn't be much considering the speed of battery innovation isn't nearly as fast as for example cpu. Another example is that all the windows laptops I've owned, including a Acer Swift 5 purchased in 2019 (1000 euro device) has had dramatically worse battery life even after just one year, my current laptop has about 42-48% battery war on HW monitor, with real world battery life about half of it's brand new battery life. While I regularly see MacBook only reaching 50% of it's original battery life 4 -5 years after purchased. Both my laptop and MacBooks I mentioned are daily driven. This doesn't make sense as li lion battery from the major brands (LG, Samsung, Panasonic etc.) are similar to each other and I haven't hear that Apple is using some magic battery. While I don't have a large sample space, I've seen enough device to find a general trend. I've formed few hypothesis: One is that apple devices have better battery management system? Mayber gentler charge, or smoother discharging, which helps the battery last more cycles. It's well known that Apple's hardware optimization is good and maybe this extend to the battery as well. Knowing how many models of android/windows device some manufactures make each year with a R&D team that's likely smaller than what Apple has, it's not unthinkable that android/windows device may use a general battery management system that could be aggressive on the battery. Another hypothesis is that could apple to throttling their device overtime to conserve energy so that the battery life stays more or less consistent. They've done this before and I won't be surprised that they might still be doing this to extent the intervals between battery replacements. (side note: I would actually like for windows to have this feature so I don't need to replace my laptop battery every two year at 70 euros a piece, I don't max out my cpu on ms word anyways) It could also be overtime, the amount of bloatware and bloat-processes on android/windows increases, leading to more load. This won't make sense if the battery ware level on apple devices are significantly lower than their android/windows counter parts, but as I haven't personally checked, I can't comment on this. Lastly, I suspect there could be a user style between the average windows and mac user. The average windows user might be hitting their machines harder than the average mac user considering mac users are often more casual than the windows user. In conclusion, I can't confirm or deny any of the hypothesis or my theory in general as I'm not knowledgeable enough or have a big enough sample size to do so. I would love to hear what others in this forum thinks. If you have knowledge in this field, I would love to heard an expert perspective.

I've had my Huawei P20 lite for about 1.5 years now, and one of the biggest problem that annoys me is the speed which the camera loads, it takes anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds to open. Which sounds like little time, but it makes me miss enough moments and making experiences such as snapchat and insta much worse. I tried to clear the camera cache as some suggested, did nothing. I also tried this on a Huawei P20 and a Mate 20 incase it's the problem of the budget phone, same story. I remember when I had my iphone SE 1, the camera opens instantly, I already get a image on the screen as I was sliding left on the home screen despite it being years behind on specs. Which makes me question whether it this a problem with the android OS? But I can't make a conclusion as the only phones around the family are Huawei making my observation a sample size of one. Could other who have different android handsets chime in on this?

I think there are few things I need to clear up, my usage will mostly be a case of "store and forget", such as putting old pictures or old school files on the drive, forget about it until I need it 3 years down the line. In fact, tbh my daily data write is usually in the kilobytes with word documents, with occasionally couple hundred megs of photos. I fully agree with this statement, although it assumes the drives are properly cared for like running in a tower or NAS. My fear is accidently dropping the drive or it getting banged up in a drawer. Thank you all for your input, I was having doubts since using SSD as backups were not commonly talked about. But from what I've seen, I'm pretty confident I'll be fine.

Hi all, So I'm approach a point where I'm running low on storage on my laptop, I'm looking into getting an external SSD to offload some older, lesser used files. My logic being that as I mostly generate a bunch of text documents and other small files, cost per gig are less of a concern. Instead, the lack of moving part, thus increased durability of SSD would create more security. Furthermore, considering modern SDD's write limits are practically unreachable, it looks to me and SSD for my use would be more durable than and external hard drive, and cheaper than a NAS, and the small one time cost over HDDs is more than fine to me. Does my logic check out?

Thanks. So basically the equivalent of pulling the power cord on pcs.

Hi all, I found this symbol on the under side of both of my Acer laptops, does anyone know what does mean or do?

I have an Acer swift 5 laptop which I daily drive. If know anything about the older swift 5s is that they are notoriously bad in thermals, which is fine for me for the most part. As my work load makes me stick to word and chrome anyways, and I bought it for the weight and silent passive operations. The problem is that the fan likes to periodically run especially when charging, and it annoys me alot, I've been looking at ways to decrease it's idle temps. I've considered repasting it, but finding reasonably priced isopropyl alcohol is fairly hard during this time. And I'm not all that confident about repasting a 1k$ machine only one year into its operation - don't want to take the risk even if it's small. I also think the effect on fanless operation would be low, since better thermal interface would allow more heat to be transferred into the heat pipe and into the fins. Air flow would then be required to blow the heat out. Then I realized that the chassis is basically it's own passive heatsink, since it's metal. All have to do in this case would be to better connect it. I'm considering getting a thermal pad (GPU style) to stick it on the heat pipe and connect it the the chassis. Has anyone done this?

So my iphone SE died after 2 and half years, which is pretty good considering that I abuse it a lot. Anyways, I took it apart to see if I can fix it (just for fun). And I found this part (see picture) looking burned, I forget to take a picture but you get the idea what part it is from the picture. On the part it says 77611 21501 / 7761 21503 (can't read exactly which one it is). Does anyone know what it is and what it does? Just curious what killed my phone (might try to repair it when I take EE ). Thanks in advance for any tips.

As the battery in my acer swift 5 is slowly degrading, I'm starting to look for replacement solutions. And power banks are very an appealing solution since they are much cheaper and easier than a replacing battery. By far, my choices are either the Anker powercore 26800 II (https://www.amazon.de/Anker-PowerCore-Powerbank-Ladegerät-Delivery/dp/B07YJMXBHT) or one of the Ravpower ones (https://www.amazon.de/RAVPower-20100mAh-Powerbank-Delivery-Externer-Schwarz/dp/B07KS4PXVF/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=20v+powerbank&qid=1589441441&sr=8-14). Only problem is, the specs on these things are all over the place and most reviews don't cover the laptop charging aspect of these (20v output). The anker claims to be 45w, but everywhere else I look it says 30w and only 25w (20V*1.25A) on the 20v output (what the laptop accepts). Can someone who owns the powerbank tell me which is the true? Ravpower does have a 45w (20v*2.25A) output, but they are relatively new name to me, so I'm not sure if I can trust them. Maybe someone with more experience with them can help. Thanks

Acer just replied me with three stores they recommend buying OEM parts with, which is surprising as I thought they stopped selling parts long a go. But I guess problems solved for the time being. Thanks for all the reply and advice!

This is a follow up question from another post of mine about laptop battery replacements: Long story short, I'm trying to figure out if the third party battery I buy is safe to sue in my laptop. This price of the unit I found seemed right, about 60 euros. And it claims to be made by the OEM. But now days you can never to sure. One thing I did find out is that you can generate a battery report using powershell and it would tell you the manufacturer of the cell. So my idea would be simply do that when I put in the new battery and if it's from a reputable manufacturer, it's probably safe? But after I've seen how ppl can change the displayed capacity storage devices, I'm wondering if the same can be done with batteries? Like telling a no name manufacturer's cell to display Samsung or Panasonic?

How much would be too good? The ones I find are around 60 euros (70usd), for a 39wh it seems to be one the alright side. But I don't know much about the topic at hand so can tell for sure. My plan is to replace the entire battery pack, like just unplug the lead off the mb and put in a new one. It's impossible to recell these rectangular cells these days w/o a degree in electrical engineering.

I did some more digging, apparently although the cells are made by panasonic, if you look closely at the battery on the teardown, it's actually made by the same manufacturer. They just sell them without the acer logo...This is getting more interesting. Already did, but due to corona, their reply turn around is pretty slow...still waiting Thanks for all the advice

Hi all, I bought my acer swift 5 about 9 month ago. But the battery is already showing 38% wear on HWmonitor and it's no longer getting me through a day. In theory it should be covered under warranty, but I don't have time to send it away as I need it daily. I decided to replace it myself, I would go OEM but I couldn't find any replacement (Ap16l5j), the one in my is made by panasonic, anyone know where to get this? I also tried to find third party ones, but the only ones I could find are made by this manufacture: 斯丹达（重庆）SiDanDa (ChongQing). I've never heard of this company but they seems to be pretty big. Anyone who had experience with this company? What are the risks associated with third party batteries? ( Only articles I can find are written in the era of removable batteries, and the OEM are still selling replacements. But that's no longer the case. p.s I live in Germany, if you know any reputable local retailers, please let me know. Any answer is appreciated.