Sony Vaio S Battery Life Only 3 Hours

I recently purchased the Sony Vaio S and I'm only getting approx. 3 hours of use on the main battery and 3 hours on the extra battery sheet. The computer is used to simply surf the net and light word tasks. No gaming. The screen brightness is set at 50%, power save power plan, and graphics is set to stamina. Could anyone advise what their battery life is and any suggestions to extend the time before recharge.

 

I also had about the same as well and i had exactly what you had(power saving etc..).
What i found that made my battery life jump to almost double is replacing the HDD with a SSD. Now with the SSD i get approximately 11 hrs(what it says on the battery indicator) at 80% charge(batterycare 80%)

 

Check task manager to make sure you don't have a process/task that has gone afoul with high cpu load (virus, etc.).

 

Thanks for the input. What rate would be a high CPU load?

 

I only get about 7 hours with the sheet battery included.

SSD, STAMINA mode, web/office work. 80% batterycare, too.

 

With no apps "active" you shouldn't see anything higher than 1-2%. If you see anything bouncing into the teens, you have an issue.

 

I get 3 hours on average or less with 60 processes and 0% cpu usage. Sony lied lol. SHeet battery in the mail

 

Lets put it this way, the MBA13, with an ULV processor and a battery that is less than 5% smaller than the Vaio SA battery, is lucky to get 6 hours of web surfing (assuming no flash). The battery on our laptops are just small. For comparison, a coworker has an ASUS U31SD with a 81Whr battery (about 40% larger than our SAs), and gets around 7 hours of battery life (though it has a lower end display, and no Optical drive to feed). So 3-4 hours is about right for our lappies

 

I purchased one for my wife for Christmas. I understood that the batteries were to work "in tandem" (one after the other). However, when Battery #2 gets low, the computer shuts down. After manually disconnecting the sheet battery, it will boot back up on battery #1 (the internal battery). A lot of messing around. Is this the way it is supposed to operate? It is not what I had in mind when I bought it. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

NOT the way the laptop is supposed to operate. When battery #2 gets low (4%), the laptop should switch over to the internal battery.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I guess the next step is customer support. This is my first Sony, so hopefully I will get some help fixing this.

 

When the sheet battery is attached, the computer says that battery #1 is not present. If I leave the sheet battery attached when there is less than an 8% change, it shuts down, even if battery #1 has a good charge.

 

make sure your BIOS is up to date.

 

I have updated the Bios and the problem appears to be solved; the computer recognizes both batteries. Hopefully they will work (and charge) in tandem. Thanks for the tip!