running 6324W on battery

i tested my battery yesterday, because i had a feeling that the battery time was alot shorter than it should be. i got a 6 cell battery and a 2ghz cpu and a 100gb 7.2k hdd.

i charged the battery to full charge and started the timer. i measured the time it took from 100% to 5% and it lasted roughly (+/- 1-2 minutes) 1h50m. this was with the powersaver scheme (max 50% cpu ect ect) and 50% brightness on the lcd. the notebook was basicly idle, and all i did was to refresh a website i was reading every now and then. in other words, the usage was next to nothing.

is this normal? on the website it says 2h45m with minimum usage and 1h25m with max usage. previously i played a lowspec game ( www.transportgiant.com its not even 3d) and i dont think it lasted more than max 1 hour. this was also with the powersave scheme. i will try to play a movie later today to see if i can even finish one before the battery dies.

looking at other notebooks with similar specs and components they are atleast 40-50% better (taken from some of the reviews here) than what im getting, and i find it rather disappointing.

i would be interested to know what batterytime other people with 6224W/6324W are getting.

 

Make sure the power saving functions of the graphic card are turned on. Are you using XP of Vista?

 

im not an expert, but i think its the gpu that is using the power, playing the game will use the gpu, mayb just this pushes it into the high usage end?

 

im using vista, so theres not really any powersaving options that im aware of apart from the one in the power scheme.

 

There are the nvidia powermizer settings. Never tried this in Vista but in XP they are set at max power after install even for battery.

 

i got similar results with Sob. 1h50min approx. i guess thats ok, or at least what i expected to get. these numbers from the manufacturers never stay true.

 

I've just got the 6024W (Intel GPU) and Vista is predicting about 2.5 hours which is low for this hardware (the datasheet says 3.5 hours).

I looked in the Performance Monitor and found that the CPU is not going into the C3 deep sleep state. This will be a major contributory factor to the low battery life.

John