Since we are talking of dead lipos, I will just say Never attempt to fix a lipo which wont accept charge, the guides and tips online which claim you can by forcing a charge in to them can potentially cause the lipo to explode and create a fire... My house is worth a heck of a lot more than a £30 LiPo battery (5500 times as much to be precise). Scrap the battery (safely) and buy a new one.

Anyway, back to the W3, I personally recommend them. Acer (out of warranty) customer support is poor but hopefully it'll not be needed.

Rich, here is an interesting 8 inch tablet, the Encore WT8 with quad core (next generation) Atom Z3740, should be more powerful than the W3 and at 178 quid a bit of a bargain.

cpc.farnell.com/toshiba/pdw09e-00400een/tablet-8-encore-wt8-a-102-win-8/dp/SB0551501?Ntt=sb0551501

Argos are selling them for £179 also.

Tony

I'll check them out. Thanks.

When I get some more funds I'll take a look in to picking one (or more) up.

Anthony is correct. The factory told me it was a known issue.

I had the same battery problem with my brand new W3. The fix is very easy:

Do a firmware update. That fixes it.

Hope that this helps.

Mel

Firmware, drivers, bios flashing etc. will not affect the battery or the charging circuits in the W3. Doing any updates will not change a thing with a dead battery.

The issue arises from the batteries in the W3s not being fully charged during manufacturer therefore the voltage can, on occasion, drop below the "under voltage" level which ruins the battery.

Once below this voltage level no amount of software upgrades or even hardware will repair the battery. Once a Lithium based cell is under voltage it is dead and cannot be repaired.

Acer acknowledge that the batteries may become dead and therefore accept that they need to replace them under warranty. This is not to say it is a known issue. The percentage of dead batteries on new units is extremely low.

The same issue affects a number of tablets including the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Venue 8 Pro, HP Touchpad, Asus Memo Pad, Apple iPad, Apple iPod amongst countless others. In fact, there are many (many) topics and web pages documenting the issues which arise from Lithium based batteries and even more topics and posts on other hardware forums which are "My tablet wont charge".

Again, this is not a "battery issue with the W3" specifically and the W3 should not be dismissed on these grounds. It is a "battery issue with a Lithium based battery".

If anyone missed yesterday's Woot, it is now on Daily Steals / Heists for $139. They stay up there until sold out, so it may last a few days. Some other Windows and Android tablets on the same page.

Tablet Deals

Alan

Hey guys , I received the w3 tablet today and just charged it up. I downloaded ARC first thing. I notice the lighting is a bit dim when I first pulled it out of the box but I turned up the back light in the settings. I was surprised it arrived so quick.

It looks good but out of 28 gb memory there is just shy over 10gb available for software. So I will be inserting a 64gb card soon I believe ( like today) otherwise the tablet looks good.

They come with a good bit of "bloatware" so you can recover some space by uninstalling stuff you don't need, but yeah, a micro-SD card is recommended.

Alan