is my M1330's battery life too short??

can m1330 owners tell me their battery life and their usage conditions? e.g. brightness levels, wi-fi on/off, surfing net, words doc, watching movies, 6/9-cell battery etc.

personally, i only managed 2hrs 50 mins with 1/8 brightness, wi-fi off and typing words documents on a 6-cell batty. is this normal?

and does anyone know what's the weight of their m1330 with 6-cell batty? i carry it daily and find it rather heavy, am thinking of buying a lighter laptop. And dell website's only states 1.8kg which is for 4-cell batty.

 

Click on the battery meter in your lower right system panel...try the 3 different settings such as 'Power Saver' mode.

Your just under 3 hours on a 6 cell...normal.

 

This review gives an idea of how long your battery should last.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3898

What are your power settings set to?
High Performance? Dell Recommended? Power saver?

You might download something like NHC and check your battery wear.
Be sure to get the "bugfix" version for Dell computers.
http://www.p35-forum.de/files/nhc_2.0_pre_release_06_dell.zip

 

That's terrible. With a 9 cell on max brightness, 8400m I get more than 5 hours just web browsing.

 

I don't think it's normal,even my Clevo M570RU manages 2 hours at max brightness and power saver settings.

 

I get around 3 hours with brightness set right below the max on a 6 cell and 5 hours with a 9 cell. Both with wifi on.

 

Kree....sorry I find 5 plus hours on max brightness hard to grasp and have yet to here of anyone getting that.

Can you tell me what else you have turned on/off with that? Is it in power saver mode? Email on and chacking? Antivirus etc?

Also, if any other gets above 5 hours on max brightness...please jump in because I want to know how its done...I still dont think it possible.

 

LED screen, undervolted CPU running at 600mhz (t9300), GPU underclocked, low power g wireless so I suppose my comparison is a bit biased

No anti virus, no indexing, prefetch on.

 

To the OP, this seems normal to me. Vista reports that my battery will last 3hrs 45mins at 100% battery level at minimum brightness and wifi on. But around the 45% mark, the time meter just plummets much faster. So in reality, the battery reaches 3% in about 3hrs 5minutes with light usage(web browsing at min brightness). This is with a 6-cell on the power saver mode.

 

5 hours on a 9 cell is possible, my D420 could get 5-6 on just over half brightness with wifi. 5 hours on a 6 cell is practically impossible.

3 hours would be a good time for a 6-cell with screen brightness at a reasonable level and wifi turned on. You should be getting more with everything turned down (My D610 can get 2:30 with decent brightness and wifi.

 

No...clarity is becoming evident when you account for underclocking, undervolting etc.

If you check way back, I tested both 6 and 9 cell on the m1330 and even did comparisons between hd/ssd and my m1210.

I got over 5 hours with a ssd but his was after optimizing my power configuration and similarly, 3 hours for the 6 cell was and still is normal.

I just don't know of anyone running their system at 'high performance' or with full brightness that gets 5 hours plus.

 

I use a custom profile so no idea how it compares to high performance.

 

I have my system on full brightness.
Wireless on.
Power saving plan set at Balanced.

Browsing the net and using general Windows tasks, I generally get around 4.5 hours usage from a battery (9 cell)

 

I get just under 5 hours with my M1330 and a 9-cell.

 

I correct myself, meant to say: 5 hours with a 6-cell on Max brightness is impossible as my D420 (with ULV processor) is only capable of that on a 9-cell battery when new.

I'm assuming that is 3 hours with decent brightness and wifi?

 

so it's normal to net 3 hrs with half-brightness and wifi on for 6-cell?

but i only managed 2hr 50mins with lowest brightness, wifi-off and typing words doc at power saver profile which i've reset to be even more power saving than the default power saver.

I'm also far from NBR's of 'Wifi enabled, display brightness 6/8, web browsing - 15.6W (3:35)'.

can anyone tell me how to achieve 3 hrs and more with wifi-on and half-brightness?

 

My guess would be that there is a problem with your battery. How old is this machine and what battery life are you getting with wifi on and half brightness?

 

I get about 3 hours with a 6-cell with brightness around halfway.

I agree with you about the weight, I was expecting the laptop to weigh less than it does.

 

Ditto.

-Funk

 

Yep, 3hrs with Wi-fi and medium brightness sounds about right for a 6cell in Vista (BTW I have the older T7250 not the newer more power efficient T8x/9x series, I mostly use Balanced or Power saver profile)

 

How much without the wifi?

 

Just tested. with wifi-on, power saver profile, 5/8 brightness, surfing web, i only netted 2h 10 mins.

Mine is T7300, bought around last sept..

I think something's seriously wrong with my battery!

 

I got the 9-cell battery because the 6-cell was only pumping out about 45min-1hr with 30minute of Photoshop usage(minor color corrections and sharpening) and importing about 1-2 gb of images using "High performance" power scheme

I never got 2-3hrs just browsing using "power saver", half brigthness, and wi-fi on. I have had the computer about 2 months and surprised that some get these numbers.

How much time do you get with "hi performance" and using programs such as photoshop?

 

I get at least 3 hours and average 4 hours with my 9 cell. Brightness is at 1/8, but sometimes I have to bump it up a notch or two, depending on what I am doing. I browse the net a lot and often have multiple tabs opened (sometimes IE, Firefox, AND Opera ... I just like comparing website compatibility sometimes... compulsive behavior, LOL), I pop in a CD once in a while to install software driver for an application. I run Photoshop quite frequently just to edit graphics/photos.

If you have bluetooth and not using it, I'd switch it off. Turning off bluetooth from my cell phone when not used REALLY helped a whole lot, so I can imagine it being a plus to switch it off from the computer side.

I turned off VISTA indexing too.

I have Dell's recommended power saving profile installed... I think it does go to sleep after a period of time, but I am pretty sure I increased the time to idle before making it go to sleep. Changed the lid shut from sleep to do-nothing.

I have a 6 cell, but I haven't test it out yet... I prefer my 9 cell battery at home so far. 6 cell to me just seems pointless... just to make the laptop look pretty. Correction... maybe it makes the laptop lighter... I just don't have much use for the 6 cell... Oh... I did use the 6 cell at the airport.... but only for an hour which it worked just fine.