V2000Z Official Real-life Battery Times

For those of you (including me) that have always wanted to know the real-life battery life of the Compaq V2000Z, look no farther. I officially clocked my V2000Z's (Turion ML-30, 4200RPM HD) battery time using uptime.exe from Microsoft. With my regular usage, battery life came to right at 4 hours (12-cell, fully charged to 5%). This includes mostly internet usage, with about an half-hour of Half Life 2. With constant internet usage, you'll get right at the other side of 5 hours. With WLAN off, look closer to 5:30.

If you opted for the 5400RPM HD variety, cut back those times a little. I don't know by how much, I don't have a 5400! Maybe someone with a 5400RPM could post their times. If you go with the 6-cell, cut those times in half. The 12-cell is really worth the extra $39. In addition to the doubled battery life, it raises the back of the laptop to increase ventilation, inturn lowering temps.

 

Actuallly, you might not see any change in those times with a 5400 r.p.m. drive. Some folks have even seen battery life improve. The disk spins faster, but b/c of faster access times it will be on for less time - saving battery power.

 

Actual power consumption of HDD vary widely, and some 5400RPM consume less power than 4200RPM drives. I upgraded from Fujitsu 4200RPM to Toshiba 5400RPM drive and did not see any changes.

For the record, I get 2:45hrs -3:00hrs with 6 cell, wireless always on, internet browsing, some photo editing etc. RM clock undervolt only makes 10 min difference for typical internet usage, but high loads like game playing it makes lot more difference.

 

The 12 cell battery is 120% larger than the 6 cell battery (8800mWh vs. 4000mWh). The v2000 (Intel version) uses normal 4400mWh 6 cell batteries. Insert Intel conspiracy theory here. Anyhow, it's yet another reason to buy the 12 cell.

 

As per spec it is 43Whr battery not 40Whr. I do not know about the Intel version though. It is still more than double capacity it seems though.

 

I got 3hrs. + (low battery message) with Presario V2403nr 6cell. At full bright with wifi. Cm 1.4 14.1 in. screeen, with mainly internet and some video. I am very happy.

 

Are you sure it is 6 cell? Congratulations for the excellent configuration

 

I believe that's a Celeron based V2000 and not an AMD based V2000Z. Even so, with screen brightness at full, that's impressive you get that much battery life.

 

but i heard that celeron is worst at battery life because it has no speed step.

sempron, turion, pentiumM all have speed step which makes them run at lower clock while at minimum load to reduce the power consumption.......i wonder why you say it has to be celeron.

 

My bad, I didn't mean to imply that a Celeron would get better battery life... I know Celeron's lack SpeedStep.

 

Based on my experience speed step is overrated as a factor .

 

Now, that's a brave claim. Wrong, though /based on my experience/

 

Based on my experience, Speed Step is a huge factor! With the 6 cell in my dv4000, I got 3.5 hours of battery life last night. Why? I was only using one program - my browser. Normally I have a browser open, Word, Outlook, another e-mail program, and Google Talk running. Like that, I get just under 3 hours. An extra half hour seems pretty worth "rating", to me.

 

After undervolting my processor, I am now getting six hours internet time!

 

I get about 2.75 on my 6-cell, and about 6 on my 12 after undervolting.

 

With these numbers, the Turion is REAL competition with Pentium M.

 

For now, Core Duo (Yonah), has a similar power consumption as the current Pentium M, and performance just blows away Turion.

It'll be some interesting months ahead.

 

It's not fair to compare the Turion with Yonah....but if we do - I'll be interested to see what the price to price ratio and then the performance to performance ratio will be.

 

It'll be interesting to see which will be delivered to end-users first: Core Duos in PCs (not Macs) or dualcore Turions. AMD likes to announce their new chips after they're ready to deliver. Intel tends to be a wee bit more impatient. Turion x2's should go head-to-head with Yonahs on 32-bit code and do quite nicely on 64-bit Vista where Yonah can't play.