Why is the battery life so poor on the E1705?

I was reading reviews for the 9300, and people with nvidia 6800s were getting ~2.5-3 hours with the 6 cell. So why are people with E1705s getting a mere 1.5-2 hours?

Apparently the core duo is just as good as the Pentium M on energy. And although I dont know much about the 7800 go, I know the desktop 7800 uses less power then the 6800... So I would imagine it would be the same for the GPUs.

So where is all the power going? I keep seeing people blame it on the GPU but I find that very hard to belive. Even if it does use more power then 6800, it's been underclocked to 250MHz, so there is no reason for it to be the main loss of power.

This may sound silly, but I cant help but think there is more to the MS driver bug then what it seems. Not to mention the E1705 has 6 USB ports... (@3@) I just really dont understand how two laptops that are *very* similar have a 1 hour difference in battery life.

 

hmmm... well, there's a lot of factors that go into battery life. maybe the numbers you're reading aren't exact comparisons in terms of wifi on/off, screen brightness, etc.?

 

That might be... but I dont think so. In general the E1705 seems to get a half hour, to an hour less then the 9300.

I mean I hope its something like that. It would really suck if there was a design flaw with the E1705.

 

I don't see how users with the 6800 are getting 3 hours with a 6 cell. I have a X300 64 mb, and with a 6 cell I only get about 2 hours.

With a 9 cell, I can usually squeeze out 4 if I'm having a good day.

Since these are large laptops, it takes alot of power to run them.

 

I think its simple as this. Once you step up to the 17inch + graphics card. = Low battery life.

My 6000 has a smaller screen, and is equipted with the x300 and is capable of around 5.15 with the 9cell.

 

Maybe the reviews are exaggerating then. I mean if you can get 4 hours best case senerio, it would make sense for them to say they it lasts for 3 hours.

Edit: Oh. I didnt see you had a 9 cell too. Well maybe they are just flat out lying.

 

I've noticed Dell tends to post lower battery life expectations on their webbie, than the battery life is rated in reviews like on Cnet.

Back when I was shopping around. I saw 6 hours for my model on PcWorld's review. But the Dell website listed 5.05 with the 9cell.

I have come to the conclusion either Cnet and PcWorld know something we don't or they do exaggerate.

 

Generally most "official" reviews are over estimating the life.

Abaxter said that he only got about 2.5 hours (i think?) out of a 9cell for the E1705, and that's pretty close to being correct. We had a thread on this awhile back, but the video card sucks life out of the batteries. There was several 6800 users and me comparing against each other, and it was a pretty big difference. My 4 hours comes out of using Dell Quickset to manage my battery, and having brightness down. The only thing is that generally i'm have my wifi on.

That's why i suggest if you plan on using your battery for extensive time, you might want to get two 9 cell batteries.

SG

 

Hold up. This is off topic, but Dell has a battery management software?

 

With my 9cell, I get 3-3.5 hours (Quickset Max Battery). His numbers do fall right in line with what they should be.

 

Yeah, Dell's Quickset will help manage your battery better if you want to call it that. It has most of the stuff that you see in Power Management/Options in the control panel (like going into hibernation, standby). You can create profiles to fit your needs when you are on battery and ac adapter, but it also has 4 pre-configured profiles, and one of those is Maximum Battery.

 

i managed getting a estimated 4 hours with the 9 cell on my 9300 with the 6800 and UXGA screen. i had to put everything on powersave with screen brightness all the way down and wireless off. then i undervolted my CPU to get another 10-15 mins for a total of 4:02. o and my power consumption was in the low 20's maybe even 18 or 19 watts. with my 6 cell its hard to get over 2 hours, but i run everything on max performance.

 

I've looked all threw the software that came with this thing and can't find a Quickset prog. This dissapoints me. I've been leaving it to Windows. One of the few things I miss about my old laptop is Toshiba's Power Management software. Is Quickset equivelent to that? I'll download it off the Dell site.

 

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...en&s=dhs&SystemID=INS_PNT_6000&os=WW1&osl=EN#

under applications.

If you have to reinstall it if you do a clean install.

 

Thanks. Appearently I lost it when I did the clean reinstall.

 

That's what i figured.... I tried to say that in my last sentance, but you can see how that came out

 

Lol. I'm probably Dyslexic (Which I can't spell to make me look even dumber) and I'm certified. A.D.D.+ So... Don't worry about it. xD!

That was redundant for me to type anyways.

 

Just to add some more info... The E1705 uses a Duo CPU. The Centrino Duo's use 28% less power then the original PM's. So you should be getting better battery life on the E1705 then on the 9300. Also.. people say they only get 1.5-2hrs with the E1705. Perhaps that is with the screen all the way up or Wi-Fi on running or running heavy apps. But I have heard people say that there E1705 gets 2.5-3 hours with the standard battery.

 

There may be another explanation for the poor battery life that you are getting. Tom's Hardware Guide found a problem that shows up in CoreDuo processors. It appears that plugging a device into a USB port will cause the computer to consume large amounts of power. Read more here. On the brighter side of things, Microsoft claims that it is a problem with the ACPI driver included with SP2 and it intends to release a fix for it in the near future. Read more here. I don't know if you were trying to use any USB devices while experiencing your short battery life, but if you were then here is a possibilty.

 

You may also want to review the AnandTech article... http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2693&p=1

 

I was just reading this Tom's HW article about the core duo processors... and it shows something very similar to the E1705's battery life in comparison to the 9300's.

The core duo processors are better then the PMs at not using energy... and yet they get 1 hour less battery life then the pentiums.

I really do think there may be more to the "MS driver bug" then what it seems. And if there isnt, then something else must be causing a problem.

 

cant trust cnet with reviews.. they are bias in my opinion.

 

My eye has been on the E1705/i9400 but I'm concerned about battery life. I always use a mouse instead of the touchpad. That will trigger the drain, right?

 

there is a bug with windows xp where intel duo cores that have usb devices plug into the notebook drains more power than normal. So yeah that is a problem.

But even if the bug was fixed. Yes using a usb connection would drain battery. But NOT A LOT but it will. You can try to disable your networking card if you are using wireless or vice versa. It might save you couple of minutes more battery life im not too sure exactly how much it saves but i do that to all my notebooks.

Sometimes i disable my cd/dvd rom drive too. I usually disable the stuff i dont use.

 

SeaSlorg, the bug will not affect battery life using a mouse. It only affects USB 2.0 devices. Anandtech did alot of testing and one of their tests used a mouse and it didn't demonstrate the bug.

 

I have the standard battery in the E1705 and it's at 57% remaining and it's been on only 30 minutes. That's HORRIBLE battery life

 

I have 9300 with a 9-cell and I can get up to 4 hours if I dim everything and wifi-on. What videocard do you have? If it's the 7800, I remember it consumed more power and it had heating problems because of that, hence lesser battery life. Also, are you running NHC? That program will tell you if you battery wear, and that may be the true cause behind your battery life. You should have a battery life of barely 3hrs if you're under normal usage (wifi on, high brightness on the screen, just browsing) since this is what I get if I just unplug it and dont change any settings.