Sony SR Wrong battery life prediction / estimated battery life problem

Sony disappoints again...

 

hamud seemed to have confirmed my fear: the BIOS update did not resolve the battery drain issue.

 

But did it fix the battery life prediction problem?

 

This may have been covered but did anyone download/update the Vaio Power Management software? Any improvements on the battery issue via that?

 

omg !! what the are you doing sony ??? i installed the update !! discharge my battery tell 0 % and charge it again till full !!

used it till 36 % and turned it off ?? wait 6 hours !!

guess what ?? my laptop don't want to run any more !! i plugged it and find the battery was 0 % ?????????????????????????????????

and i tried to install the Bios driver again and it told me " this driver is not for your model "

 

Hamud : FAIL

 

Umm I just tested it on my SR
when I unplugged the power cord... the estimate says 3 hours and 58 minutes...
so the estimate sounds about right now...

 

this with the normal or extended battery ??? after update the Bios i have 2:40 same as before ??

and you are using XP or Vista ??

any body know how can I reinstall the bios or restore it to the first one ?? please i need this ??

 

the standard battery with 32bit vista

Im not sure if you can or not...

 

till now the problem solved with you ??

i thing that this bios is not installed properly with me !! what can i do ??

 

any body can confirm this ... ??

 

nope... at 80% charge mine still says 2:10-2:15 for 20 minutes+ then go down

 

same here !!!

Tony
\Umm I just tested it on my SR
when I unplugged the power cord... the estimate says 3 hours and 58 minutes...
so the estimate sounds about right now...

----------------

can you confirm this again ???

 

i am currently doing a full charge instead of the battery care charge, and it is taking hours to charge.... still at 95%. i have an hypothesis of what is going on and i hope the estimation will become correct when it fully charges. will report back with results.

 

any new ????

 

i guess the charging stop at 95% was a glitch. with 100% charge, my prediction is still at 2:40.... this is pointless....

 

Nope, it did not.

Battery life seems to last longer than the prediction. Or so it seems in my case.

 

Was fully charged and on AC power. Removed the AC power and got 2:40 on my battery meter. I have ATI 3470 128 mb, by the way..

 

wat did u do that made it happen? is it still working? cus if it still is... u better make a how to guide!!!! hahaa

 

T9400 & T9600 are not as efficient, in a power consummation way, as the P8xxx. With the standard battery I get 2h30 100% charged. with the extended less than 5 hours...

 

My SR has the same battery problem. Does anyone think that the new SR is coming out soon will do the fix?

 

Is the SR26 considered new??? Cos thats what I am intending to get tomorrow...

 

Time can only tell to fix the battery drain issue.

 

My Sony SR420d/h gets a battery prediction of about 2h 30min, does anybody know how to fix this what is making this computer's battery so lousy at times.

I put it on power saver with very low screen brightness, yet it tells me I only have 2 hours left 20 minutes left at 82 percent charge. Maybe we have to use the battery all the way to critical level so it conditions and it can predict it better. Will this shorten battery life to use battery until shut down or should I go ahead and try it?

 

My VGN-SR 430J/B is having similiar issues.

It is advertised to have 6 hours of battery life, yet on Windows 7 on power safer mode I have 2 hours and 50 mins. at 100%. I don't know why or what else I can do to get 6hours?

I'll try and recharge and deplete my battery

 

Has anyone tried the Sr's battery life with Windows 7?

 

never tried it with vista, getting around 3 hours, but its still draining while hibernating

 

battery life sucks, around 2 hrs 40mins tops

 

So what do we do about this? 2hrs 40 mins is horrible battery life for a 13.3 inch portable laptop. The macbook pro 13.3 inch is crankin out 6 hours at least.... is it the sony battery or what?

 

Apple uses a Li-ion polymer battery, which allows it to shape it to whatever shape it wants, and as a result it can put in a higher power density, but at the same time it is more expensive. The rest of the laptop manufacturers just throw in cells into a casing, so there's a large amount of wasted space.

 

Ok. So the only way to get more juice is basically to buy a 300 dollar extended battery?.... How does your laptop perform eli2k?

 

I agree...I love everything else about my Sony SR220 but the lousy battery life really sucks, pun intended

 

Sony really should fix this problem!

 

where can you buy an extended battery for cheap? are there generics and are they cheap and reliable?

 

has anyone checked this in windows 7? is the issue still their? im currently using an sr140 and it was at 3% over 20min ago. its been at 1% for the past 6 minutes (im timing) and its still going lol.
this is in vista, planning on installing win7 shortly

 

I am installing W7 as we speak. I will report back but I doubt the issue will be fixed if it is a BIOS problem reporting to the OS.

 

Bought a brand new SR51MF yesterday......


Windows 7 and RMclock are reading a maximum of 2hr 40m for the battery life in power saver mode. Exactly the same as the original poster - over a year ago!

Spoke to Vaio link support and was told that they aren't aware of any issue - so I gave them the url to this thread!

Any change to the power settings does not effect the battery life - leading me to believe that the estimation is completely wrong, but not sure how it could also be wrong in RMclock.


How has anyone dealt with this problem?.... going to do some testing myself tonight, to see how long the battery actually lasts..... but this is really annoying considering that I've just spent £999.99 on a laptop!


Surely it can't be that hard to fix

 

The battery life estimation has been a problem since a long time ago. When it says you have 2:40 left; it really doesn't mean you have 2:40 left. As you use your laptop, you can get a generate estimate how long your battery last. For instance, with my specs; 20% of battery = 1hr - 1hr 10mins while surfing the web, word processing w/ 5/8 brightness.

 

So you can get over 5 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!! ??????????????

 

Hi! Im on an SR-15T right now and face the same problems.
i got it 18 months ago, and back then the battery lasted slightly longer than 3 hours, which i thought was just fine... i had no idea that it was supposed to last even longer. im really annoyed to see reviews claiming 4 or 5 hours of battery time...

the battery time kept degrading on this laptop and after around 6 months it was down to a tad over 2 hours. at that point i started installing both windows xp and windows 7 and played around with power options, display brightness and rmclock.

rmclock does NOT read the battery capacity correctly on these laptops, and other readings are most likely wrong as well. the REAL meassured battery time used to be longer than what windows and rmclock reported. they reported 2:20 and i managed to get 2:50 etc... but as the reported battery life descreased, the reported and actual battery life became closer to one another. and right now windows and rmclock tell me 2:20 or 2:30 sometimes, but the actual battery life is 1:30 or 1:45... ouch!

i also noticed that the battery takes longer and longer to charge, and if i remove the charger for a second and plug it back in, the battery immediatly shows as only being 93% full and then charges for over half an hour.

the battery used to drain more or less steadily, and then last longer towards the end as was displayed, ie 15mins left and actually it still lasted 25mins. right now the battery drains incredibly fast to 30% or so, within an hour, and then drains much slower from there on.

i talked to sony about this 6 months ago when the battery started notably degrading and they said that its normal and not covered by the warranty. they didnt even offer me a discount for buying a new battery...
im REALLY dissapointed not only of this, but the terrible built quality of this laptop... the plastic frame around the display can be pulled away from the panel with a finger easily, dust and dirt fall inside the displays frame and thats probably how my display got errors and then died when the laptop was only 6 months old. since i had upgraded my memory sony refused to give me warranty and i had to pay almost 300E for a new display, THANKS SONY!

not to mention the body of the laptop bends a LOT when pushing on it or lifting the laptop up only holding it at the front... this also was ok at first but the older it got, the weaker and softer the plastic body got and the more it bent. right now it bends so much im worried itll break if i hold it only at the front. the right mouse button almost stopped working and i have to push it really hard, sony refuses to accept monthly updated graphics drivers from ati and instead prefers limiting me to almost half a year old drivers, the touchpad is acting up more and more as well, some keys on the keyboard stopped working, the dvd drive has some bent cable on it that blocks it from closing properly once its open, so i have to carefuly bend that cable flat and slowly push the dvd drive back in, s3 and s4 both on xp and windows7 crash one out of 10 or 20 tries, fullscreen video sometimes freezes or shows corrupted colors and pixels... did i forget anything?

this thing sucks, im NEVER buying a vaio again... ever...
i just went to a pre computex event here in taiwan and had a look at their latest laptops and i can see the same flaws my vaio developed ready to annoy a new generation of vaio users already... especially the ridiculously cheap display frame and flexible laptop body that bends as soon as you push on it slightly with your thumb, dvd drives not closing properly, hah...

i actually know what these things cost to make, its around half of what you guys paid for them, its cheap made in china cr4p... i got it for the mfc cost cause i know somebody at foxconn who makes those laptops, and even for that i regret having chosen a vaio...

i like the keyboard, the display quality, the webcam, the heatsink/thermal design and the stylish case design... but thats really it... im getting either an apple laptop with win7 on it or an asus culv with turbo 33...

EDIT: I have to add that i charged and discharged the battery almost daily within the first year, since i used this laptop on the go all the time. still, thats why a laptop has a battery, doesnt it? and to go from 3.3 hours which is still less than it should actually do, to almost 1.5 hours within a year and then not rmaing the battery is just ridiculous...

oh and this has nothing to do with a driver or some cpu fluctuation in power draw etc...
this is a battery issue. doesnt anybody remember all the battery issues sony had? others were affected as well but nobody had as many troubles as sony... and why would that be? cause they buy the cheapest batteries they can, just like they use cr4ppy and cheap components in their laptops overall and charge extra for having the name SONY on it... the days that sony stood for quality really seem to be gone.

so great, now the batteries dont blow up anymore, they just IMPLODE instead of EXPLODING
id actually have preferred that this damn thing would go into meltdown so i could get my money back or get a new or replacement laptop that i could then sell...

if your interested in the vaioX or vaioP or some other unique product, and you dont care about money, go ahead... but whenever theres an alaternative to vaio, id recommend everybody to take it... even toshiba asus and acer laptops are getting slim and stylish these days and offer the same or better built quality than sony, for a notably lower price...

and if you want quality, get an apple laptop... metal body, air tight sealed display... i really dont like apple but their laptops are built really robust and last...

 

You shouldn't have done this with your laptop's battery. The battery degrades quickly if you had it discharge(below 40%) frequently.

 

yeah, your right... i shouldnt have used my laptops battery ever so it wouldnt degrade right?

what i really shouldnt have done is spent that much money on a laptop before holding it in my own hands and seeing it with my own eyes to realize what a piece of cheap plastic cr4p it was and how ridiculously low the battery life was.

what i learned:
1.) dont buy a laptop before you have seen it and ideally used it yourself
2.) just cause its a sony does not mean its good quality
3.) sony support sucks, at least in asia... they are rude, slow, uninformed and just dont care

i went to a sony store 2 days ago and thought maybe i should just buy a new battery instead of a new laptop, after all the asus ul30 series i was looking at was very very similar to my vaio, just cheaper and had a much longer battery life... but sony told me that even with the extended battery life i would only get around 4 hours out of this laptop... and with time that would become less and less of course. the price for this battery is around 250us$... ouch! and the best part is that its 200gr heavier, notably bulkier, and... not available anymore...
thats right, sony told me there are no more extended batteries for any SR laptops anymore... at least in asia...

best part: when i started the conversation i said that im really not happy with the ridiculous battery life on this vaio and that i was thinking whether i should buy a new battery or a new laptop... the sony guy IMMEDIATLY replied i should buy a new laptop... and started telling me how great the new Z series was etc etc...
i looked at it and it has the same cheap plastic chassis and display frame and costs a LOT... and still has way shorter battery life than the acer or asus CULV series... then he showed me the vaioX which i already knew as well, and i told him the that the hole chassis flexes and bends and makes weird sounds while doing so, and that there is no way im going to spend 1500us$ on that slow piece of plastic with an atom cpu in it, KNOWING that as soon as it breaks, they will tell me its my fault and ill have to pay for repairs, just like they did with my SR...

he didnt know what to say, neither did i, so i left... so long sony...

EDIT: forgot to mention, i just bought an asus UL30vt yesterday, the display is slightly thinner, higher res, 3 instead of 2 usb ports, hdmi, about the same cpu speed, huge and fast 500gb hdd, its thinner, its lighter (1.7kg vs 2.0kg), it has an 8 cell 85whr battery vs 55whr in my vaio and it lasts up to 12 hours on battery vs up to 2.5 hours for my vaio, it has nvidia G310 graphics i can enable or disable, and the best part, it cost around half of what my vaio used to cost.