I think the truth might be somewhere in-between. The BIOS on these machines seems buggy, but ASUS can provide Windows drivers to cope with their own BIOS problems.
I am currently running a 3.8.0 kernel patched with Aaron Lu's work mentioned here: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52951. Since running this kernel, most of the problems in this bug report have cleared up for me. On rare occasions the battery indicator will be incorrect after resuming from sleep, but it happens far less frequently. An added bonus is that the brightness keys now work with proper OSD notification. I kind of wonder if the BIOS maintains some sort of ACPI state between shutdown/reboot/resume. I know that sounds odd and on most systems I would expect a clean state after shutdown or reboot, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me, given that yanking the power adapter and battery resolves the problem. ** Bug watch added: Linux Kernel Bug Tracker #52951 http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52951 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to upower in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1088146 Title: Asus n56vz battery state is wrong or battery not charging at all. Status in “upower” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: I have an ASUS N56VZ notebook. There are some bugs I have mentioned and they are known on ubuntu forums. Sometimes I am getting strange results in battery power state, that are not even close to be accurate. So bugs are: 1) Then I am turning on the notebok with not enough power (3% for example) the fan is going to it`s full speed (no CPU loading at all) and the power indicator shows that power is insufficient. Plugging the power adapter didn`t solved the problem - it was not charging and notebook soon turns off. 2) As I described above, I can`t feed the notebook sometimes (especially on low battery level). 3) I am getting the strange battery state result: sometimes it looks, that it`s charging very slow. Am am working about a hour and my power level just rised from 30 minutes to 40 minutes. 4) I am not sure about this bug, may be it`s a hardware one, but then I turned notebook off with plugged in power adapter, it was not charged at all for the whole night! http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2084696 - here is a proof, that I am not alone ))) ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10 Package: upower 0.9.17-1build1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-19.30-generic 3.5.7 Uname: Linux 3.5.0-19-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu6 Architecture: amd64 Date: Sun Dec 9 13:18:17 2012 ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/upower/upowerd InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-11-30 (8 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5) MarkForUpload: True ProcEnviron: SourcePackage: upower UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upower/+bug/1088146/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
