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    Question about the M15x battery..Thanks

    Discussion in 'Alienware' started by shaknbakenyc, Oct 15, 2008.

  1. shaknbakenyc

    shaknbakenyc Notebook Evangelist

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    I was wondering how smartbay battery works, does the M15x drain the main battery first then use the smartbay for the extra life or how does it work because I put both of them in together at the same time fully charged and i believe that they are both being drained at the same time...


    Please also give me some pointers on how to have long bettery life... My sleep mode and stealth button does not work so any help would be greatly appreciated... Do I need those 2 buttons to really save battery life? If so please let me know.. Thank you again
     
    shaknbakenyc, Oct 15, 2008
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  2. cha

    cha Notebook Deity

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    Things you can do to save battery life:

    1. Use integrated graphics
    2. Lower brightness
    3. Set power plan to power saver
    4. Turn off Alien FX
    5. Unplug unnecessary peripherals
    6. Activate stealth mode

    I usually get up to 6 hours of battery life with smart bay battery, enough for one whole day at work :)
     
    cha, Oct 15, 2008
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  3. Ennea

    Ennea wwwwww

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    It should use the smart bay battery first then the primary battery. When charging, it charges the primary battery first then the smart bay battery.
     
    Ennea, Oct 15, 2008
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  4. findvikas

    findvikas Notebook Deity

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    well its decided by vista, if you have both battery on 0% then it will charge primary first for upto 25-35% level. then switch to secondary for certain level and so on. same thing with discharging - first uses secondary , but primary is also used at certain levels.

    if you have both on 100%, then you might notice that secondary is @ 10% while primary @ 60-70%
     
    findvikas, Oct 15, 2008
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  5. shaknbakenyc

    shaknbakenyc Notebook Evangelist

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    Does stealth mode make that much of a difference, im not sure if I should send it in for them to repair that ( AGAIN... )
     
    shaknbakenyc, Oct 15, 2008
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  6. findvikas

    findvikas Notebook Deity

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    Stealth mode makes a lot of difference to your battery life. It downclock your processor and GPU to half its capacity.. which require less battery and low speed of fans
     
    findvikas, Oct 15, 2008
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  7. shaknbakenyc

    shaknbakenyc Notebook Evangelist

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    theres no way of doing this manually?
     
    shaknbakenyc, Oct 15, 2008
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  8. findvikas

    findvikas Notebook Deity

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    could not figure out yet... just figured out today how to switch BinaryGFX manually or rather programmatically :)
     
    findvikas, Oct 15, 2008
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  9. shaknbakenyc

    shaknbakenyc Notebook Evangelist

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    Alienware has balls to send me the laptop in the same exact condition, im most likely sending it again tommarow for repairs and if they dont fix it I am going to sue the f out of them.
     
    shaknbakenyc, Oct 15, 2008
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  10. Oceanus

    Oceanus Ambassador

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    I'm sure if you're on Vista, the power saver mode does something similar, doesn't it?
     
    Oceanus, Oct 15, 2008
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  11. Napbree

    Napbree Notebook Evangelist

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    Does stealthmode downclock the intergrated gpu as well?
     
    Napbree, Oct 16, 2008
    #11