The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Getting the most out of the battery

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by eazyrog, Aug 10, 2010.

  1. eazyrog

    eazyrog Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi All,

    Looking for some advice, i have a Sony VGN-Z21ZN, currently it has the battery care feature enabled as i'm always using the ac adaptor, but later this week i'll be travelling for afew weeks and will need to try to get the most power out of my battery.

    Other than turning off the Care feather and the basic stuff like blue tooth and putting it into Stamina mode can anyone tell me how i can get my laptop to run on battery the longest,i'm not worried about performace as i'm only going to be using outlook and the internet via my wifi sometimes..

    Some people seem to belive it can do up to 5 hours, i could only wish, my maxmiun is 3 hours so far...

    Thanks
     
    eazyrog, Aug 10, 2010
    #1
  2. 5ushiMonster

    5ushiMonster Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    130
    Messages:
    728
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    31
    I've been using my VGN-Z26 on battery extensively the past two weeks (draining the battery from 80% on BatteryCare), draining the battery down to about 8%. Before all this usage started, the battery-wear on my standard battery was 0% (despite being a year and a half years old).

    Just two weeks later consisting of this extensive usage, the battery-wear level is reading 3%. I guess the extent of CHARGING that you do is what causes batteries to die quickly, rather than the fact that one keeps it plugged in all the time.

    Yet despite this, I can get about 6 and a half hours of Word processing from a 100% charge (with brightness down to lowest, thermal settings on silent, volume on mute, wireless switch off, and power settings on a slightly-tweaked BALANCED). All this, with a standard battery. If I left the Z idle I can see the battery reading 7 hours remaining on a full 100% charge.

    If you were using wireless (just the WLAN), then I would expect it to cut the time by 2 hours or so. I saw mine reading 3 hours and 50 minutes remaining when it was reading 78%, and it stayed that way for a good 20 minutes or so...
     
    5ushiMonster, Aug 10, 2010
    #2
  3. Rachel

    Rachel Busy Bee

    Reputations:
    1,369
    Messages:
    4,245
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    106
    Adding to what SushiMonster wrote how about putting the integrated graphic power display drivers into max power saving mode. That also helped to boost my battery life.

    Also, try tweaking your wireless adapter settings in your network and sharing centre. It seems to be set on max roaming and max power transmit as default. I don't know if the built in power plans override this but still i tweak mine and set mine to medium to be on the safe side.

    Turn the dvd drive of also.

    eta:
    Also, when you surf use FF and ad block plus and no script.
     
    Rachel, Aug 11, 2010
    #3