How many hours did you guys get for battery life of SZ160?

I got about 3hours and 25minitues with VAIO Maximum battery setting and my brightness was 4. (Of course in Stamina mode)

I think I should get more than that because sony advertised that max battery life is up to 7 hours.

My battery life is terrible. I only did word processing and internet surfing.

How was yours?

 

Do you have the USB2 patch installed?

 

No.. people didn't recommend to install that.

I don't want to mess up my laptop

 

hi there did they reall made an efficient USB patch? Because its the first time I heard someone telling someone else that that patch does exist! if it does and it work I'll buy the laptop tomorow!!!

 

I haven't actually timed a full battery drain but right now my battery show 3 hours with 66 percent remaining. I have the CPU set for performance and the LCD at level 7. I'm running with the on board graphics. This seems quite good to me if it turns out to be fairly accurate and I think it is judgeing by how long I have used it on this charge so far.

 

So it looks like you gonna go uo to more than 4 hours with the battery at 100% capacity which is reasonable... but fare from the 7 hours that they said...

 

Did you use the USB2.0 patch?? Did you use wireless lan whole time?

umm.. I'm not sure it's only my problem..

 

4:15 minutes in stamina mode, LDC brightness 4, wireless on the whole time. I did a lot of loading of software (DVD drive use) and had a wirless MS USB mouse attached. I figure the USB patch, if it is ever made official, should get this close to 5 hours but that's a guess.
I agree that this is a long way from Sony's intitial claims and that is pretty bogus.

 

mine says 3:18 hours 97%.. what should I do?

MY finger printer has been always on.

 

Is there any word on the effectiveness/life of the extended battery? Seems like you are all getting 4hrs w/ the regular, so the extended would only get around 6. The battery life is one of the big selling points for me on this notebook. Might as well get a powerbook if its only 6 hours...

 

You wouldn't even get 6 hours with extanded battery. more like around 5.

 

Maybe try and discharge all the way and charge fully and then see if it makes a difference. Then make sure you are in stamina mode and that the camera is off, etc. If it doesn't improve then I'd call Sony and get a replacement battery.

 

how can you turn the camera off?

 

There is a green light on the right side of the lens. If it is off, the camera should be off as well.

 

Wasnt there a USB power bleed related to Windows and the CoreDuo chips? The fingerprint and camera are usb & could be draining power. I think you need to run a patch for windows to correct this power bleed.

 

I got close to 5 hours with the USB Patch installed yesterday. However I hibenated last night and this morning I was down to 75% in about 40 minutes. After reading on AnandTech, it appears that patch isn't active if you enter standby so to the full life, you have to reboot afer every standby.

 

thanks for all your comment! I made my choice and I'm gonna buy it! just a last question, where did you find the usb patch? can't find it?

 

I found it by reading the AnandTech article, however, it's not really a patch...it's just a registry key you add. Here are the instructions I found somewhere

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\USB

Note: If the USB subkey does not exist, create it. To do this, follow these steps:
a. Select the Services key. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
b. Type USB in the New Key #1 box to name the new key "USB."
3. Right-click USB, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. In the New Value #1 box that appears, type EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, leave the Hexadecimal option selected, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor.

 

Thanks a lot! I keep that for when my SZ160 will arrive!

 

Does anyone know if this issue will be addressed in the next Windows update or will you always need to manually patch this?

 

I constantly get 3~3.5 hours on the stamina mode.
Is my battery sucks or my hardware has problem?

Also, does anyone have "bbi~~~~" sound on the left side of the touchpad?

 

I sure hope the address it with an actual patch to the USB Driver. This "Fix" kind of sucks. It only works after a reboot. According to Anandtech, f you go to sleep mode and restore, it's no longer active which jives with the battery life I am getting as well.

 

Thanks for that "patch" information. I went through the process outlined above and it improved my battery life from around 3 hours in stamina to closer to 4, but that is still far from what is advertised on their website. Before implementing that fix yesterday I called sony style tech support and was told that my 3 hours on stamina and one bar of screen brightness was within the "normal range" of the specs for this laptop. He then went on to say that I could get closer to the stated 5.5 is my laptop was in HIBERNATE! Unreal. So I am told by sony that the only way to get the advertised battery life is to render the laptop unusable.

I believe my fingerprint reader is still functioning even with the above "patch." I would think that is why I am only getting around 4 hrs. Any suggestions?

 

The patch doesn't disable anything, it only allows the system to go into super low power mode with a USB device connected. So disabling and/or turning off these devices (wireless, camera, reader) should improve your battery life.

Since I haven't seen it in this thread, and most of the questions asked could be answered by reading it, I'll repost the anandtech article link.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2693

I'll also echo their note that this is NOT a core duo issue, it applies to P4's as well. I would guess that there will have to be a Windows update on this, since its M$'s problem and since XP is currently supported. In the meantime, the patch at least helps.

 

Thanks for clarifying that Ktismael. I am not very tech savvy so this may be a dumb question, but how do I go about disabling these things if I want even more battery life? Maybe I should read the link first….

 

Well, with all the complaints about battery life, I decided to put my 120 to the test. The problem is, "testing" battery life is very subjective, and you can potentially get very different results under "seemingly" similar conditions.

I decided that one of the likely scenarios that I can be caught in where I wouldn't have access to an electrical outlet of some sort to charge while using, is on the airplane. Likely use would be watching a DVD. I also believe that it is unrealistic to expect anyone to dim the screen significantly to extend battery life while watching a DVD, so I left the screen brightness on full. Also, on an airplane, there is quite a bit of ambient noise, so Volume will also be on high. The only thing I did to reduce power consumption is switch to "stamina" mode, and turn off the "wireless" switch.

Results:
2hrs40min
That is when I hit 5% and the machine went into hibernation.

Given that I use sound isolating earphones, I can easily get away with cutting the volume way back, and I could probably bump the LCD illumination back a couple notches. I could probably stretch battery life to close to 3 hrs. That is still better than any other notebook I have owned, including 2 other Centrinos.

Overall, I think expectations are way too high, and that is Sony's fault for publishing numbers derived from very unrealistic usage conditions. I'm just glad I didn't expect 7hrs from this standard battery

I was thinking about getting the extended battery, but given the fact that I'll be carrying an extra battery regardless of wether or not it is an extended battery, I may just save myself 100 bones and a few extra ounces, and just get another standard battery. That should provide more than enough extended usage for me.

 

jk:

In some cases you can just switch them off (with a hardware switch on your computer). I'm not sure in the case of the SZ as I don't have one (still on the fence). However, just because something is off doesn't mean it isn't using power or cpu cycles. By going into the Device Manager (you know how to get there right?) you can look at each device and set it to disable when you know you'll be traveling and will need longer life, and won't need those devices.

How much of a difference will it really make? I have no idea. I haven't tried it myself, and I'm not really sure how the devices or drivers are designed. I would guess it would have a minor effect, but much less than 10%, but that's a total guess. Still if you're really looking to get the longest life possible its worth a try.

Keep in mind (as mentioned in the Anandtech article) that even disabling the devices doesn't get past the M$ USB bug, just having it plugged in is enough to keep the CPU from powering down (and in the case of the SZ, the camera and probably some other devices are always "plugged in" because they're integrated into the notebook.

 

Once again kt, thanks for the clarification.