Battery Lifetime

Dear all,
I am requesting the help of all of you out there with some technical savvy. I'm not interested in how long your laptop will run on batteries, but interested on the power consumption rate. You can download a nice little app and run it for free for 30days, it is called Batterymon.
Why am I asking this? Well, I have two laptops at home, a HP DV6175ea and an Asus 5160. They are pretty similar laptops with the HP being the more powerful with a dedicated video card but with the more economical T5500 processor, versus the T2050 of the Acer.
Nonetheless I was really surprised to see how much longer the Acer system can run on batteries, up to 3hr30mins versus the poor 1hr30min for the HP system. Forgetting the state of the batteries, the important number here is the power consumption. The Acer system consumed c.a. 17W at low power consumptions settings that allowed for wifi internet surfing. The HP on the otherhand consumes upwards of 30W with very little variation if close the lid to turn off the screen or run an intensive game. I am not asking for you to help me solve this problem, because I simply think it is bad design of the laptop. I use every concievable (I hope) trick to cut the power consumption; undervolting, underclocking the CPU and GPU, etc etc..

Thus what I propose is that you whoever is interested download and install the app and run it to obtain a graph, by using the logging setting in the configuration settings. Then send it to me with a short description of how you were using the laptop so that I can look it. I am wanting to see how the power consumption varies from user to user and laptop to laptop. The number of interest is the charge/discharge rate.

I feel there is a great deal of mis-information on the market, with benchmarks solely stating battery life in time, and not stating the laptops power consumption in watts.

Here is an example. If you battery full charge capacity is 50Whr, then if your laptop consumes 25W, then your run time on the battery will be 2hr, 50Whr/25W=2Hr.

What do you think?

Killian

 

Sounds like a good program, but I believe that the market only shows time since wattage is still abstract for general consumers along with the fact that power consumption varies greatly depending on how the laptop is used.

Personally, I think it's easier to say that this laptop has an average battery life of 2 hours, than to say this laptop consumes 25W. Esp. since laptop batteries are also different in their capacities.

 

Here is the Link

 

If you go into Battery info, then Battery Device in RMClock, it shows the discharge rate and the charge rate for free.

Also I think Mobile Meter has it too.

 

My acer 8204 uses about 28 watts full brightness running basic programs, and 21 watts with dim brightness and idling.


The battery just crapped out though. NHC shows wear level at 62%. Acer is sending me a new one under warranty though.

 

Good tip Allan except that now I know my battery capacity is 12% below original. I can't handle it the whole notebook is going in the freezer tonight!

 

Hi,
i think we should start talking in Watts, and describing battery capacity as Watts Hour, it is not a difficult concept at all. Then people can understand where the work time is coming from, is it an efficient laptop or a bigger battery.

Also the battery monitor in Right Mark Clock does not work properly for my laptop, as I think my Laptop does not have an in built discharge monitor.

I'm well aware that power consumption varies greatly depending on what one does, but there are maximum and minimums, and it is these I am interested in, just as kiksul08 has shown.

K

 

This doesn't make any sense to do. You just start confusing the average consumer. If you really want to know, take their run time, and figure the discharge rate based on the size of the battery. Its the same thing, minus the confusion. But, what do we even gain by doing this?