Battery Life on Sony VGN-TZ90

I thought I would start a thread dedicated to this. Its causing me a lot of confusion ... maybe my expectations were to high. As seen in my thread " Working XP on TZ90" I am getting other people telling me their battery life is that low too.

Everywhere I looked the battery life of the TZ90 is indicated as:

• Lightweight battery pack VGP-BPS11: 6 hours
• Standard battery pack VGP-BPL11: 12 hours
• Bulk battery pack VGP-BPX11: 18 hours

Even the retailers show it as that - see also:

• Conics:
• Dynamism

My laptop shows me normally 5:20 on a Standard Battery Pack.
I tuned OFF all hardware whilst I am running XP - I can now get it to 6:10.
But it's meant to be 9 - 12 hours ... How was the 12 hour battery life tested and derived - on standby ?

More importantly - my old TX is giving me the same life time on a lightweight battery ! I am confused ... am I the only one?

 

These times are always GROSSLY overexaggerated by all manufacturers, not only Sony.

With the standard battery, you WILL get 12 hours, only after having the laptop fully idle, doing nothing with the screen off, Wifi/Bluetooth off, etc. Just basically have the laptop doing nothing at all.

And yes, one thing the TX does beat the TZ in is battery life. The Core Solo's suck less juice than the Core Duo/2 Duo, including ULV. Thats why Intel's releasing the ULV Core 2 Solo's late this year.

The TX has two battery options, standard and extended, with roughly 7000 and 14000 mah respectively.

The TZ has three, lightweight, standard and extended, with 2900, 5800 and 8700 mah respectively.


Don't worry, your battery time is on target, even though you were a bit cheated. Sorry.

 

Hmm ... that's bad news then. I was actually hoping that it was detecting it wrong. Knowing this I should have purchased the larger battery instead of saying I will never need more than 12 hours. Strange enough when I bought the TX it was adverticed as 5 hours which is exactly what i always got.

Someone should mention the words "fair testing and false advertising" to Sony. Testing a battery on standby is not testing a WORKING laptop. I can understand turning the high power toys off and tuning the brightness down. But basically turning it off is not a real test of the battery power then.

Thanks for the explanation of the power values. I will surely look out for these next time

 

rahulnirmal wrote: "Thats why Intel's releasing the ULV Core 2 Solo's late this year."

Interesting info for a non-tech like me, and sorry for my ignorance. Do you think the next TZ model will use ULV Core 2 Solo? And, if so, what are the pros and cons?

 

The Core 2 Solos should offer more battery life but I'm shocked to hear they only have 1 megabyte of L2 Cache, unlike 2 in the ULV Solo/Duo/2 Duo and even some Pentium Ms.

 

I am wondering is the "Bulk battery" much bigger/heavier than the standard?

Any pics/info would be great!

Thanks

 

is this with battery conserving setting? ie reduced processor speed etc?

 

Yes ... all things tuned down

 

that's normal ,relalx man.just try to set down the brightness to sth.7 level.and tune to the optimized battery mode in control pannel-->power management.then change the settings.