Just got my SZ140 and I got 4.5 hours

I just bought my SZ140 from the Student Store on campus and it's great. I bought the SZ140 that came without the bluetooth, webcam, and fingerprint reader. It was the barebones SZ at the store but It was 1600.

I ran it on batteries while installing Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Black & White 2, I also defragmented it browsed on the web and burned the recovery CD. I was on it for 4 hours and the meter said I still had 30 mins left. I'm happy I didnt buy the model with all the fancy stuff b/c I didnt need them and I couldnt afford the extra money.

 

Thanks for posting that, and welcome to the forum, fellow SoCal member!

Javier

 

That's a good sign - I assume it was with the regular battery and not the extended version?

 

I haven't actually clocked anything, but I've been happy with the battery life... I'm going to organize a battery test soon...!

 

yeha im really too lazy to put together a battery test. ikaris why dont you put together one and ill follow your lead. lol

 

Yeah it was on an extended battery and I was really surprised. I kept hearing stories of around 3 hours and today I almost hit 5hours while working with flash.

 

I just got a SZ90 from Japan, and running with medium brightness and Ultimate Battery setting (all devices off (except for WLAN) and drive spindown) I got more than 6 hours with the standard battery (11.1V/5200mAh=57Wh). The machine used 7,5W-8.5W when I was browsing the internet, reading some emails, and writing a few documents. With battery optimized setting it uses about 15W and when it is working hard at 2.17GHz it used about 24W (only one core I guess). I am working from a clean XP PRO install.

 

Ah extended battery.
Well that makes sense. a 2:40min movie with normal battery, multiplied by 1.5x (per sony for ext battery time)=3.75 hours. And thats with dvd. I'm sure if you're not using the dvd all that much, you should hit over 4 hours.

 

What a minute. Is the extended battery the one that comes with it or the one that sticks out. Mine's the one the doesnt stick out.

 

doesnt stick out. So if you can watch a dvd movie (full brightness+45%volume) greater than 2:40, youre system rocks.

 

One thing to note: when it comes to DVD-ROMs, there are two things that move the head of the hard drive... seek time and read time.

Seeking is when the head goes to find a piece of data. This is expensive since the head has to move around and position itself into the place where the data on the DVD is.

Read is simply the head moving very slightly as the tracks are read as the DVD spins.

So, if you're jumping around the chapters, you will lose your battery life much faster.

ALSO this applies for Hard Drives.

If you defrag your hard drive often, the head of the hard drive won't have to seek as often to find all your data because it will be more intelligently packed.

Just a word to the wise...

 

i completely believe you, but noone here has gotten close to 6 hours witht he regular battery

 

I was a bit surprised myself after reading the vrious posts, but running with "Ultimate setting" is pretty good. Just to verify I added the USB fix, made the screen and WLAN be on the all time and logged the battery down to 40% (I didn't have time to more)

LoG:
Unique ID, Manufacturer, Chemistry, Voltage (Volts)
Sony Corp., Sony Corp., Lithium Ion, 12.53

Date, Time, %Charge, Total life(hours), Remaining life(sec)
2006-04-30, 00:45:20, 100%, 0.00, -1
2006-04-30, 00:55:20, 98%, 9.14, 32248
2006-04-30, 01:05:20, 97%, 9.26, 32325
2006-04-30, 01:15:20, 96%, 8.62, 29792
2006-04-30, 01:25:20, 94%, 9.33, 31582
2006-04-30, 01:35:20, 92%, 9.38, 31052
2006-04-30, 01:45:20, 91%, 9.44, 30914
2006-04-30, 01:55:20, 89%, 9.28, 29740
2006-04-30, 02:05:20, 87%, 9.30, 29127
2006-04-30, 02:15:20, 85%, 8.92, 27288
2006-04-30, 02:25:20, 83%, 9.26, 27678
2006-04-30, 02:35:20, 80%, 9.45, 27203
2006-04-30, 02:45:20, 78%, 9.33, 26210
2006-04-30, 02:55:20, 77%, 9.33, 25849
2006-04-30, 03:05:20, 75%, 9.36, 25264
2006-04-30, 03:15:20, 73%, 9.40, 24704
2006-04-30, 03:25:20, 71%, 9.27, 23694
2006-04-30, 03:35:20, 70%, 9.28, 23383
2006-04-30, 03:45:20, 68%, 9.41, 23040
2006-04-30, 03:55:20, 66%, 9.09, 21595
2006-04-30, 04:05:20, 64%, 9.37, 21598
2006-04-30, 04:15:20, 63%, 9.28, 21055
2006-04-30, 04:25:20, 61%, 9.27, 20354
2006-04-30, 04:35:20, 59%, 9.21, 19572
2006-04-30, 04:45:20, 57%, 9.28, 19038
2006-04-30, 04:55:20, 54%, 9.42, 18311
2006-04-30, 05:05:20, 52%, 9.44, 17681
2006-04-30, 05:15:20, 50%, 9.44, 16995
2006-04-30, 05:25:20, 48%, 9.22, 15929
2006-04-30, 05:35:20, 46%, 9.20, 15242

Battery screenshot from Batterymon:
Design capacity 57720mWh
Charge rate -7624mW

In this test the hard disk was off 99% of the time, the hard disk draws about 2W when it is running.
If I use the Portable/Laptop setting I get about 3,5 hours battery time.