Optimizing for diskspace, performance and battery life for Vaio Flip (and others)

uhm, from my side, after applying the suggested tweaks I am not sure I got any benefit in terms of battery life. Needless to say the 12 hrs mentioned above are nowhere close to my experience. Would love to read updates and/or others experiences

 

Anyone having further experiences to share with the suggested tips or having further suggestions to improve battery life?

 

One tip, though. I figured this out the hard way, DONT disable the Vaio Event Service IF you want the orientation to work properly. There are magnets behind the screen that sense if you've flipped the screen and the Vaio Event Service is what monitors these and changes the auto-rotation on and off. I was wondering why I had to tilt the base of my PC to get the screen to flip for presentation when I used to just release the screen and turn it over. I enabled the Vaio event service from Control Panel > Adminitrator Tools > System Configutation > Services (Tab) > Check "Vaio Event Service" then I went to Task Manager ( WIN+R > taskmgr.exe | OR | WIN+X > T ) > More Details ( Alt+D) > Services then right click "Vaio Event Service" and click "Start." You're all set now.

BTW thanks Franek for this amazing tutorial. I have this bookmarked as a guide for optimizing other PCs.

 

I would say that I get around 8-10 hours of battery life. Check your settings in Control Panel (View In Icons) > Power Options > Change Plan Settings (For Whatever Plan You Wish To Customize) > Change Advanced Power Settings.

Here are my settings:

Plan: Power Saver - Not necessarily the best for saving power using my settings, though.

Postimage.org / gallery - Capture, Capture1, Capture2, Capture3, Capture4, Capture5, Capture6

 

I have exactly The same configuration You show in The screenshots And i do not GET more than 4 hours of battery life.


Enviado desde mi iPhone con Tapatalk

 

Just wanna say this thread is awesome. Thanks so much.

 

Went through and did allot of the suggested optimizations. Really looking to reduce the load on my computer for gaming and to increase battery life.

Seams to be helping quite a bit thanks for all of the tips!



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i know this thread is sorta old but figured I would ask here anyway and give it a shot. I have a Flip 15 with the i7 and 16gbs of RAM and a 1tb HDD. What i wanna know is which optimizations would really help prolong my battery life? I am not to worried about freeing up RAM cause 16gbs should be enough to run things smoothly but battery life is maybe around 4 hours and that's with just web browsing and maybe a few videos. Also wondering if an SSD upgrade would help improve performance as much as it is touted to do

 

Replacing your HDD with an SSD will absolutely improve performance dramatically - more so than any other improvement you could make to your computer. And they have come down so low in price that it is hard to justify any other investment until you have first done this upgrade. As for battery life, I have found the following to help me get one hour or more from my Flip 13A"

1) Set the screen refresh rate from 60hz default to 40hz when running on battery. You really won't notice any video changes, but it will add up to 30 mins, depending upon how much of your use is video.

2) Goes without saying, but set the screen brightness to the lowest level you can work with when on battery - single greatest use of power, you can add up to 45 mins going from 100% to 30% if you can live with that level. Any reduction helps. To avoid glare obscuring the screen image at low brightness levels, tilt the laptop to the left or right until the reflections are out of your view; an IPS screen's viewing angles make it so that you can look at it from even a 150 degree angle and have an undistorted view.

3) turn off bluetooth and wifi when you don't need them. They are only incremental, but on a full battery run all-on vs all off is probably worth 30 mins, but nobody can run with wifi all off. If you don't use Bluetooth, or use is seld BatteryInfoView - View battery information on laptops / netbooksom, make sure it is turned off.

4) Disconnect any USB peripherals if they are not in use. Disconnect charging while sleeping on the USB port that has that capability, unless of course you use it. Do this in the Sony Control Center.

5. Set the Power settings in the Sony Control Center to "Silent." This will not only eliminate fan noise, but it will throttle the cpu/gpu to a more power conservative level. For some apps, you will need to change this setting because you will need the performance, but for a vast majority of everyday uses (web, MS Office, video, etc.) you won't need the added cpu/gpu clockspeeds, and you will save considerably**

**6. Here's a great tool to quickly assess how much power you can save by implementing various approaches - as suggested above and anywhere else you read such ideas - Battery Info View is a fabulous power monitoring utility, runs circles around Battery Bar, and enables you to make certain changes and track in almost real time - impact on power consumption shown in as little as 10 seconds! I've been using it for a year and have found it to be very accurate. EG, if you were to reduce screen brightness from 100% to 30% and wait for Battery Bar to show you the reduction in power consumption, you would have to wait 10-30 minutes because not only does BB sample far less frequently (with BIV you can set the measurement to as often as every 10 seconds!) but it only shows averages over some (?how long) period of time, whereas BIV shows actual, real time consumption.

Good luck. I love my Flip 13 and am getting 6.5 hrs though my screen is smaller and I have only integrated graphics (by using Silent mode, you will generally run on IGP only, so you can reserve the nVidia GPU for only those times when you need it) and I have only SSD for storage. Also, I only have 8GB RAM and I have read that having excess RAM can increase your battery consumption. Don't know what you'd want to do with that. Of course, you may need the 16GB for what you do, as well as 100% of the clock speed on your cpu and to have the discrete gpu always in use and, for that matter, you may need to drive all those pixels on the 15% screen at a high level of brightness. If all of the foregoing is true, you can consider 4 hrs pretty good, as the batteries on all Flip models are incredibly low capacity - presumably to keep weight down. For about $100, you can get an auxiliary battery - not one that is made for the Flip, nor does it "snap on," but it would plug into the power port and provide you with the equivalent of 50% - 100% more than the internal battery's run time. You can find these on Amazon and elsewhere.

 

@lovelaptops Thank you so much for the response!! I am gonna implement some of the stuff you have suggested. I didn't realize having the Power Settings set to silent would have that kind of impact (Only cause I didn't think it through lol) I do have a problem tho. I can't find some of the settings in the Vaio Control center. The option for 40hz refresh isn't there, I can only go as low as 47hz. The option for silent running I can't find at all either in the Vaio Control Center. There is an option for passive cooling in the Advanced Windows Power Settings though. Would that do the same thing? Unfortunately I do need both wifi and bluetooth to be on especially when not plugged in. So those options are out. Definitely gonna download the BiV software, sounds like a good app to have. Your comment about the battery got me thinking, do they make a larger mAh battery that will actually fit inside the laptop, even if it isn't a SONY brand battery?

 

@Mrephunk:

I think some of my suggestions have settings on the flip 13A and not on your beast of a 15 (jealous = me! ). As for "silent" operation, on my Vaio Control Center, under "Power and Battery," CPU and fan. You can set it to "Silent,"Standard" and "Performance." I do think you are correct that you can get there if the setting is missing in your Vaio Control Center by reducing the maximum cpu to, say, 25% and the cooling on passive. As far as the 47hz vs 40hz screen refresh, where are you finding the setting? I get it from the Intel IGP control panel under "display," and "refresh rate." The options are 60 hz and 40 hz. One of the biggest differences between our two models is that you have the nVidia gpu. Clearly, you'll get your best "mileage" running on Intel IGP. So try to find your settings on the Intel Control Panel and, when you don't need the d-gpu, see if there isn't a way to force it to IGP only and then see if your Intel Control Panel settings are the same as mine. There is also a [presumably redundant] setting in the Windows Power settings where you can set graphics for "Maximum Power Savings." I haven't seen a larger mAh battery and am not sure how they would do it because it seems to always be a matter of greater mass, which in the case of this model there is no option for it to stick out, like, say, a Thinkpad. The one thing I might suggest if you are taking it on the road and simply won't have easy access to plug-in power, consider spending around $125 and getting an auxiliary battery that stays outside the machine and plugs in through the power port such as this one

I would think all of the things we've discussed (of course, lowering your screen brightness will just about always be the single most effective battery conservation step you can take) could add easily 1-1.5 hrs to your run times. Use the Battery Info View to make the incremental changes and let it cycle through, say, 4 30second cycles and see how it affects consumption rates. And finally, if you carry your Flip in a bag - who doesn't?!! - you'll have room for that auxiliary battery and the one I linked happens to be from the best company in the business - Anker - is on sale at Amazon for 50% off (a "real" sale) and it's got 20,000 mAh, which is 2/3 as much as your inboard battery, so that alone should get you 2.5 hrs more than you're getting now.

EDIT: just noticed: you can't get the plug end adaptor for the Flip with this battery. There is a workaround, so let me know if you're interested and I shall 'splain to you how it could be done. For posterity's sake this is how it's done

Good luck and report in!

Best,
Jeff