Sony SR Wrong battery life prediction / estimated battery life problem

What?! It did not turn on after leaving it still for 4-5 days with full charge? Maybe it does drain battery automatically after all!

 

does anyone not have this problem? if it is universal to the sr range, i'm suprised not more is made of it - maybe most just use on ac.

 

How do I get 5 hours of battery life? I have the screen brightness at 75%.

 

To get optimal battery life, there are a bunch of things you can do:
- Remove bloatware
- Disable Aero effects
- Make sure you're running in "Power saver" mode or equivalent
- Turn off any unused hardware, like bluetooth, the DVD drive, the LAN port, etc. This can usually be done using the advanced power settings.
- Install AdBlock Plus in Firefox. Animated ads can reduce battery life, so every little bit helps. NoScript will also help too, but it can be annoying.
- Turn screen brightness down as far as is comfortable. They say the screen consumes 50% of a laptops power, so this can definitely make a difference.

P.S. Also, when you first use the battery, Windows may not report the correct battery life because it hasn't calibrated the battery level meter. To calibrate it, simply use your battery until the laptop automatically hibernates, and it should be able to more accurately predict battery life. However, keep in mind that the battery life prediction is always at least slightly inaccurate because, depending on what you're doing, it varies. The only real way to measure battery life is to use the laptop as you normally would until the battery runs out (and remember to time when you start/stop).

 

Ya, the screen is what uses the most power...
Also, if you use the speakers a lot, or use the DVD drive that also eats battery like nobody's business...

 

Why? because SR has a bug that predicts battery life wrong.

It's being discussed in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=285150&highlight=SR+battery

 

Yup, most of the battery "issues" seem to be just a simply battery read error... but people have been reporting some drain issues...which i cant confirm, because i haven't experienced the drain, but, regardless of the battery read issues, i am very pleased with the battery life...on the discrete gpu version, which if you disable some stuff(cd-drive, etc.) it runs for quite some time upwards of 3.5 hours...closer to 4...

 

It could be the battery indicator is wrong. However, there has been claims that if left alone for 4-5 days that the laptop will not switch on.

 

I think my SR is broken or something. I fully depleted the battery, let it charge for around 6 hours until the battery light turned off, and when I turned it on, the battery said 97%, which was ok, but it also said 2 hours 40 minutes remaining. The setting I'm using is Vaio maximum battery, and I don't even have a seperate gfx card (i have the sr with only integrated). I have about 62 processes running, and the screen brightness is around 20%..... The only thing on is wifi. How am I suppose to get 5 hours of battery life. Do you guys think my laptop is defective?

The battery indicator is pretty close to real life, because when it said 5 minutes left, it basically had 5 minutes left of battery left.

I bought mine on amazon.com. Can I exchange it at a Sony Style store, or do I have to go through amazon or sony online?

 

The closer you get to running out, the more accurate the battery indicator becomes, because there's less room for error.

BTW, "Vaio Maximum Battery" mode isn't as good as "Power saver" mode, because it doesn't downclock the CPU.

 

Hmm... have any idea on what I should do?

 

Can anyone that has a SR show me how to get the laptop to have more than 2.5 hours of battery life. I can't seem to get that number to go up on my machine.

 

Have you tried using the laptop the whole time and timing it manually to see how much battery life you actually do get?

----------------
Now playing: Goo Goo Dolls - Cuz You're Gone
via FoxyTunes

 

I pretty much get 2.5 hours with brightness at 60% and wifi on.

 

I'm having the same problem with the Z.

Charged to 100% at night. Shutdown on battery. Start up the next morning (10 hours), shows 92%.

I know the TIME remaining estimate is glitchy, but the % remaining should be accurate, no?

 

ur gonna have to drop the screen brightness to about 3/8 to get around 5 hours. Disregard the batterymeter. It is wrong. Mine always says 2:40, but with wifi on and brightness at 3/8 i got around 5 hours surfing internet continuosly.

 

Oh, good, so it's not just me. Have you ever seen a time of more than 3:00 displayed?

Also, is your fan always on. Can you hear it? I can hear mine pretty well any where in my room when the room is silent.

 

Let say I have 100% brightness and wifi on. How long should the battery last?

What about 60% brightness and wifi on. How long should that last?

 

Mysteriouskk have you actually measured your battery life by hand? Ignore the predicted battery life for now.

Did you actually read what I told you yesterday? All your questions are answered there. Start on page 2 and read what musl85 wrote.

Edit: since both threads are the same topic I've merged them.

 

I don't think the battery meter in vista really that wrong.. the rmclock battery shows the same prediction as what the vista battery meter shows
yesterday i shut off on battery with about 93% left
and then 10 mins later i turned it on again with 77% of battery left...
at first i thought its just the vista battery meter being stupid but then i opened up rmclock and the battery's mWh did drop a whole lot... ughh.. i can't even get thur half day of classes with this laptop..

 

Well Tony there are 2 issues. One is the wrong battery prediction, two is the battery drain.

You may not be suffering from the first, but definetely from the second.

PS. Yes RMclock makes the same mistake as Vista because they are getting the info from the same place.

 

More people should contact Sony about this.

I had this battery discharge problem in another laptop the battery would discharge down to like 70 odd percent after a few days of not using the laptop. I sent it to get it to get looked at and the laptop came back fixed of this problem.

You don't want to hold onto this laptop and then let your return date pass and then wish that you had either sent it back for a replacement or got a refund or something.

Hopefully Sony will bring out a BIOS soon but i would still urge people to contact them about this also it is not a minor issue.

Also to have your battery charge lose 2% down to 98% when you boot up is not enough in itself to indicate that you have a battery discharge problem.

 

By the way, there is a special thread for the SR battery drain problem here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=282258

Let's keep this thread about the 'battery life prediction bug'.

 

Do you know how can I contact Sony?

okay, sorry about that..

 

I thought that the thread was just all in one i see that the title has been changed now.

Btw, here are the Sony contact details for the US
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/co...upport:esup&ref=http://www.sony.com/index.php

and the EU this is where you can find support-
http://www.vaio-link.com/hub_cons.html

If you live somewhere else you can find the link to the support on the Sony website in your country.

 

Yeah this thread was about both, but I changed that now. I think it's clearer.

 

Whatever this thread be for, I am sure that my SR suffers from both! it surely has some battery drain apart from the bad prediction.

 

Thanks for the link. i contacted them.. hopefully i will get a reply soon.

 

Any news on this ? That bug is really annoying..

 

i have my battery in battery care function enabled so it charges to 80%. the prediction is always 2:15, then when i run it down i get almost 1:40 with 1 hour left in the battery. it is because the laptop charged more than 80% and not showing it? or it is the wrong battery life prediction? my laptop is in t9400 and 4 gbs or ram

 

it's the wrong battery life prediction..

 

so i had my laptop at 44% and hibernated. then took out the battery right away. hours later i turn it back on on battery, and it says 26%. i was pretty shocked, but then after over 30 minutes, it still shows 26%. im quite annoyed. anyways, is there any other programs out there that can do the job right?

 

I have a brand new SR and seem to be suffering from this exact same problem. I charged my battery up to 100% and get the 2.40 estimate. Needless to say I was nonplussed at first. My SR does not have the ATI gfx card, either. I also noticed the power mode does not change the figure.

I contacted Sony last night and they said to charge it for 8 hours over night -- but that made no difference. Reading through this entire thread it sounds the same as the other reports, which comes as somewhat of a relief, even thouh I am a bit annoyed, to know it's not just me.

Most of those posts are older, are there any updates on this? Can any owners file a follow up report on the faulty estimate versus real world performance? Is there any way to fix the estimate? Is it endemic to all SRs? I can't rate the actual performance yet but hopefully it is just an inaccurate estimate as with others. The performance is most important but the bad estimate would be a nuisance to live with.

Aside from this I love the system though!

 

You do understand that it's just the estimate that's wrong?

Your real life battery time should be better if you have the right energy settings.

I don't think so because the problem is not in the program but in the electronics of the battery.

You could check the BIOS for a battery calibration option but I don't think Sony has it.

 

Yes, after having read this thread I do expect this is the problem! That is somewhat of a relief, but I am just beginning to evaluate my real world performance. I expect it to be the same since the initial evaluation is so similar.

However since most of these posts were several months old I am wondering if there is any update since then by other owners -- or any kind of fix for the estimate problem. With my old XP Vaio the prediction was quite accurate and I am used to relying on it. As I said, it would be a nuisance but actual performance is most important.

Thanks!

 

With Vaio control center on max battery and Vista on energy saver, you should get 3:30 hours with the ATI.

 

just turn off the battery estimate on the notification area, and use battery percentage from rmclock. u will feel better mentally.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I'll try to keep track of this in the coming days and assume it's the estimate. I'll get rmclock, too.

Is this problem unique to the SR or a common Vista problem? The estimates on my XP Vaio were very accurate so this came as a surprise.

 

I think it's unique to the SR.

 

That stinks.

Is the source of the problem known? Can SR owners expect a fix or must we live with this?

I have been really busy, but I can report my first observations. My first full battery rundown was on pretty high settings and it seemed to get around the 2:40 estimate, roughly, with some hibernation and sleep mixed on.

On the second rundown, I am on power saver mode. The same 2:40 estimate was initially given. Based on logic and the reports here I obviously expect a lot more actual time, but I've been using the computer for about 45 minutes and the estimate had gone down nearly as much, so it clearly does nto self correct...

Is this the normal behavior of this battert estimate bug? At some point does it eventually become more accurate?

How do you other owners cope with this nuisance bug? I LOVE this laptop so far but I find this bug very annoying. :\

 

Sorry to reply right after myself, but I communicated with Sony directly about this problem and they responded that it is a battery problem not related to Windows. I am skeptical, but their instruction was to reset the BIOS and then charge the battery for 12 hours.

http://www.kb.sony.com/selfservice/documentLink.do?externalId=C94679

Has anyone tried this? I am skeptical but I will try it overnight.

 

well, let us know how it goes. in the mean time, what is everyone's fix to this?

removing the battery after shutdown/hibernate everytime? can u put the battery back in after a certain amount of time?

give me ur options

 

No problem, I'll issue a follow up report and whatever else I hear from Sony themselves.

I definitely think this is a pretty major issue, I feel like my battery life on power saver was likely somewhat better than 2:40 but it still did not seem to be anywhere near 5 hours. It's frustrating and disappointing. I wish I could get more feedback.

 

what is ur laptop's setup? 4 hours seems to be max with ATI video card as well as t series cpu. 6 hours for non dedicated video card and p series cpu.

 

I have a SR250J which has the P8400 and does NOT include the ATI card. But still the battery life estimate will not go over 2:40, and tho' the actual performance seems a bit better than that it's certainly not 6 hours. :\

The BIOS thing had no impact whatsoever, as I suspected. We'll see what Sony says next...

What is your set-up and experience?

 

well, my setup is in my sig. i also did the undervolting. i dont look at the estimated time anymore. instead i look at percentage. i get 4 hours pretty consistently if i turn the fan set up to silent. also the percent decreases slower if i take out the battery for a few minutes after i go hibernate and unplug the laptop and put it back in.

i think the battery removal helps with the power drain, and hence more hours are achievable.

 

5 hours should be possible with the Vaio control center on Max. battery and Vista on Energy saver, bluetooth off, screen dimmed, Aero off.

 

I thought of a random theory to possibly explain the battery life estimate problem. I am wondering if Vista, for some reason, is making the estimate based on inaccurate power information - basically it reports the worst possible estimate, as if you were set on performance mode or something like that, regardless of what the actual system settings are....

Maybe this makes no sense, it was just a thought.

 

Hi all SR190 users!

There is a new BIOS update on Sony's US esupport web site!

ftp://download.sony.com/US/pc/AIBSYS-00166696-US.EXE
"This utility updates the BIOS to version R0290Y1 and resolves the following issues:

Issues resolved that may occur when using Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system:

* Yellow exclamation point error Device Manager Exclaimation Point Error that may appear in Device Manager next to "Docking Station" after restarting the computer when it is connected to the docking station
* No display on the LCD screen when the computer is disconnected from the docking station while the display is set to CRT only mode
* The LCD brightness setting may not be retained after restarting the computer

Issues resolved that may occur when using either Windows XP or Windows Vista® operating system:

* Battery status may be incorrectly reported which may cause the computer to shut down unexpectedly"

It should fix the wrong battery life prediction problem!! (finally!!!!!!!!!!)

try it out and see if it works!!

 

Sorry to say there is no change !! :S:S same problem !!