SZ Battery Life Sucks

So I bought my new SZ320CP hearing from Sony that it's battery lasts up to 5 or 6 hours under minimal load - but I only get 2:30 under minimal load (dimmed screen, stamina, wireless off, few programs open...)

Is there anything I can do except buy the expensive extended battery?

 

You can undervolt your processor while on battery. That might give you a little longer battery life. Often the listed battery life is not very accurate though. The manufacturers generally list high estimates.

Which battery do you have?

 

But Sony stated the SZ models can last 7 hrs under stamina mode. 2:30 hrs r a huge difference dont you think so?

 

sonystyle has listed on the SZ page.

I substituted the * for a 1, but the footnote shows this:

Essentially this means maximum battery life possible using their highest capacity battery. Chances are the system was idling and power settings were set at minimum as well.

 

I use my SZ "minimally" all day at work, which includes several trips into hibernation/standby, and I regularly get 6 hours out of my machine.

When I'm at the office, I have all extra devices off, screen dimmed to 2 or 3 notches, WIFI off, and just use office-y applications. I also turn off the bluetooth and fingerprint scanner when I remember.

 

That's impressive. Do you have a user profile set up with all those settings or do you do it manually every time?

Have you been switching to the integrated graphics? That would give you more life as well.

 

The NVIDIA graphics options on this thing only work in speed mode.. In stamina I have reduced things to the 16-bit. Is that what you mean? What else can I do?

I have the standard battery that came with the unit. How do I undervolt it?

 

I can get motr 3 hours with Wireless on and around 3/4 brightness...doin internet surfing and stuff)

 

Just keep in mind when a company states something like a laptop getting "up to 7 hours of battery life", this is with the processor idling at the lowest setting, the screen completely off or at the lowest brightness setting, the notebook running no tasks, just sitting idly letting the battery drain, etc. These battery life numbers they claim are never with real world usage.

 

How much battery life do you need? The more you need to extend the life, the more you need to cut out.

 

Thanks for the clarification guys. I learn things abt notebook bit by bit everydays in this forum

 

yea normally I only get 2.5hrs on speed and 3hrs or so on stamina.
I've been having problems getting more than 3hrs.

I can't seem to use the laptop lower than 3 brightness cuz its too dim.

Also as soon as I unplug the AC outlet it drops to 90% battery in a matter of 5-10min. Then it will drop to 80% in another 10-20min. Seems pretty quick to me.

 

Normally on Stamina mode I am averaging a bit over 4 hours with manual settings.
Wifi on and off as needed. Using Excel, Word and Outlook to retrive mail every 30 mins.
I have sound,ie link and DVD/CD off.

 

You still seem to be getting some decent overall life though. Have you been calibrating the battery at all? How old is it?

 

Wow, your numbers semm pretty low to me. I get about 3h running on speed with wifi on and screen on 6/9. If I switch to stamina and lower the brightness to 3/9 (which is my lower limit) I can get 4+h working with Office and surfing the INet. DVD and Cable-Network are disabled here. The max way close to 5h with screen on 1/9 and all devices off that can be switched off. But that was not much fun, esp. with the screen beeing to dark. But running speed about 3h and on stamine about 4h is pretty much normal for my SZ2.

The battery drop from 100% to 90% is pretty fast on my machine too but then it gets much slower.

 

Hey,
Someone posted an article on how to squeeze out another 1 - 1.5 hours just by using a special paste on the CPU heatsink interface. Apparently, the fan would run a lot less, hence, giving you more power

 

What do you mean by calibrating the battery?
Is there a forum talking about it?

My laptop is 5 weeks old.


edit: I found the forum link. I have only ran off my battery maybe a total of 10 times.

 

You'll want to calibrate every 2-4 weeks anyway. Even if you're leaving it plugged in, it is going to trickle charge when it's charge-level reaches a certain level. Try to avoid running it all the way down except for when you are calibrating it.

It's all covered in the battery guide that you linked to above.

 

Does anyone know how much more runtime the extended battery gives?

 

Also take on account that you don't compare the new sz's to the old ones, since the new laptops comes with the higher clocked new core 2 duo's

This site is from 2001, but it gives you a clue on how they meassure there batteries. http://it.jeita.or.jp/mobile/e/

 

Good point there Crashcat

 

While in Stamina mode I managed to last 4 hours watching movies. Therefore it isn't that bad..... But then when I use it to just chat on msn / surf websites it last for like 2 hours.... that shoudn't use so much cpu...

 

so... how do i devolt the cpu??

 

You can undervolt your CPU by using either Notebook Hardware Control or RMClock.

 

great, so how exactly do I do this? Is it under the control panel?

thanks

 

No you need to download one or the other. Both utilities have excellent instructions on their websites.

 

Where did you find the article? Does it work on SZ360 series and above? Have you try it on your SZ series laptop?


Regards,
soda