The official VAIO Z battery drain thread

I see there are 2 probabilities:

1. Sony wants to sell more batteries, since more charges = more cycles and Lithiium has limited cycles

2. It is a protection feature so I won't built up charges (but why no limit, for eg..90% and stop,... but keep discharging?)

I have 2 batteries... the one I take out in several days still has 98-99%... so I'm pretty sure it is due to the Unit... not the batteries or softwares.

 

Any new breaking discoveries for this? Or have we concluded that there is no cure and there is indeed battery drainage when the laptop is shutdown.

 

I did see this in my Z540 as well and I know I did shut-down (instead of sleep/stand-by/hibernate). On the other hand, I question Windows Vista's prediction of battery capacity though, as it tells me I have 4 hours and then after 3 hours of usage I still have 2 hours left according to it.

It's not a big deal to me because I don't really unplug it till I need it and really the battery life is more than what I need most of the time. It is definitely annoying if you are a road warrior and don't want to pull battery out every time before travel.

 

I ordered my Vaio Z on the weekend (yes I knew this tread before) and its not a showstopper for me, but I would like to know what the status is on this topic and news?
Also I would like to add some of my own comments here. I think this whole issue might have something to do with any Wake on LAN or vPro stuff.
Did someone try to disable vPro / Wake on LAN (and any other BIOS options which might drain power)??
I have never noticed it before but I am using a Lenovo T61 (almost brand new) for work and on Friday I was shutting it down (no hibernate!) in the evening and put it in my bag (not plugged in) and on Monday morning it was at 70% according to the Lenovo display on Vista. ... very supprising, since I had a T60 before (about 1 year old) and I have never noticed this issue on the T60. The HW setup is pretty similar between the T60 and T61 but the T61 supports no stuff like vPro and has a newer chipset which was not in the T60. Something is really fishy here .....

 

I guess you had never a Sony notebook, otherwise you would not ask for BIOS option. Sony is protecting the customer that they can't do something wrong.

Beside this the Z doesn't support vPro due to that VT is disabled and cannot be enabled (except BIOS tweaking).

There are several thread about this topic and a lot of user had already tried to disable everything. There is no way out of this. It will drain around 0.4W -0.8W(from another magazin).

 

It also happens on my Sony vaio z 12GN. I have turned off my comp (shutdown) with 80% (battery care on) battery left and after 12 hours It was 60% battery. I guess I can't do anything about it.

I have a question. When I turned off the battery care function in the sony control panel. I thought the battery will be charge up to 100% but it stop charging when it reaches 90%. Is there something to configure to charge the battery up to 100%? Thanks

 

yes. go to vaio control, choose battery care, click advance and choose custom 100% thats all.

 

Thanks, I forgot the advance button.

 

To solve the problem of batter drain easily, just take out the battery
Put it seperately for about 1 day *test* put it in again wow 99% charged.
If u dun mind to do it, its easy problem take only 5 second

 

has anyone had this issue on the new line of Zs (like the Z21 in the UK)? im wondering if the line refresh solves this problem....

 

i had 7% loss of battery for 6 hrs..

 

I tried mine.
10 hours 6% drain.

Just to ask, does that mean that every 10 hours it will drain 6%?
Or does it just mean that no matter how long, a 6% drain is expected?

I read every page and I 'think' I've read somewhere where
someone says that he waited for 3-5 days and it still drains 6%
or something~

 

No if you wait for 3 or 4 days you can't open your laptop again coz it will be no battery remaining !! ( it will turn on but it will go immediately to hibernate mode )

 

huh? wah
so it will just keep draining the battery at the rate
of 10 hours for 6% continuously until it's dead?

uhhh...................
terrible

but i've read the entire page, so i know that the problem doesn't lie with
- operating system (Windows Vista)
- startup and shutdown (a bit maybe?)

so what does it lie with?
If its just the battery then maybe we can try to get the new extended battery and see how it works?

Ummm, or another way to test the battery maybe is to pop it in ANOTHER laptop to see if it still drains at that rate? Then maybe it's REALLY the battery problem

 

sony have to do something here :S

 

bleh!
yeh! they really have to do something..... I hope

Actually, INSTEAD of complaining to sony to get the whole
product recalled, i wouldn't mind if they just send us each
a new battery XD

Actually, it's a small problem really.
I don't really mind. The Sony adapter is very small. (Is it as small as the TT or the TZ series? or is it bigger? I don;t know because all I see is the laptop)

Thing is I might wanna get one as well for my fiancee.
She complains about how her 15 inch toshiba is heavy and on top of that the charger's heavy too. So its great to have a long hour battery capacity ones but yeah, it'll be great news as well if the charger is light.

Btw, does this model have an issue with overcharging
being able to kill the battery?

 

One thing I noticed, after breaking in the battery (2-3 complete 0-100% recharge cycles), my battery drain is almost gone -- it's like 1% drain for 10 hours now compared to the 1% an hour before, and I am not even sure that's battery drain or just the particular restart eats a little bit more battery.

Have you guys notice that?

 

The only solution so far is to remove the battery from the laptop.

 

I'm reading Skyshade's reply
I'm trying that now

So far it has been 2 cycles for me from 0%-100%
I'll just keep trying draining it from 0%
and then charge it again to 100% and see if there
will be improvement

 

i remember there being a post by someone about how to let the battery go to 0% completely. how do you do that again?

also, is there any news about the battery problem on the new line of the Zs? im talking about the Z21 in the UK. i checked the specs and it says that the new line has more battery in stamina mode but less battery in speed mode? how could that be? is it because of the faster HDD?

thanks.

 

Are you sure? If this is true you may have solved the battery drain problem.

1% in 10 hours is a completely normal loss of charge afaik.

 

So noone read my post ? ... yeah MrPhil is right, when u remove battery out, no more drain, and when u need to use it , just put in again in 5 sec, and let it sleep when u move, and remove it again when u shutdown(not use anymore)

SIMPLE PROBLEM, 5 second SOLVE, why anyone is so scared at this ? if ur scary then sell it on ebay, and but another brand or desktop, ~ ~ so easy to me

 

SkyHade ? ...... dun try to be superman, thank you if u want to show some more infor ?

 

I don't want to hassle with the battery all the time when I'm traveling. I have to take a separate sleeve for the battery to protect its connectors, and putting the battery in and out often hurts the batteries connectors etc...
It shouldn't be like this. Sony should care more about their customers...

 

I don't know for sure that it is because the breaking in -- the only other thing I did was playing with battery care function in the past couple days to see what suits me the most and in the end decided to just turn it off. Anyway, it seems to me that my battery drain, if any, is much less than before. I would love to hear some other contrary or confirmation reports.

Anyhoo, here is what I did. In whatever mode (speed mode will be quicker), run the battery down to when Windows automatically hibernate -- I asked it to hibernate in 0%, but I think it actually did it in like 3%. Then, leave the laptop as is for at least 12 hours -- I did this before go to bed and the next time I am ready to turn on is after work next day, so I got a good solid 15-16 hours to let the battery drain out. Plug in and boot, when you come into Windows, it should be showing like 0% or 1% and charging. Repeat this a couple times.

I did experiment with battery care function in the mean time, just to see what suits my current usage profile. In the end, I did turn it off and decided I will just do full recharge and full discharge (not plugging in till I need to).

YMMV, and it could be I stumbled on some battery care setting that I don't know instead of the breaking in, but it's worth a shot. Besides, breaking in battery is something you should do anyway.

 

where do you get the setting where you can hibernate at 0%?
I've been to battery care function
didn't state anything

Also, is there a way for automatic setting in a way that
when plugged in -> Sony will set automatically to High Performance Mode
when on battery -> Sony will set automatically to Vaio Maximum Battery

 

use this amazing program !! it will let you choose which profile you want when plugged in or not !!! and it has option to disable areo and vista side bar when running on battery !!

http://www.codeplex.com/vistabattery

and about 0 % hibernate u can't do this !! bu after your laptop heb on 3% turn on your laptop and press f2 to go to setup and wait till your laptop to turn off ( this will discharge your battery to 0 % and then you can charge it again )

 

Right click on the battery icon on the tray bar, choose "power options". Pick the plan you want t change and choose "change plan settings" and then "change advanced power settings". Now go down to the bottom and expand the "Battery" tab to set critical battery level and its actions.

It still hibernates at about 3% and you need to do something to drain that remaining charge out.

 

Wasn't there a Sony Utility that switched profiles depending on the power source? I can't find it after my Semi-Clean Install though.

 

The advanced power setting tab gives you a lot of that, then on the same window there should be a VAIO Power Management tab that gives you more options. If it's gone after a semi-clean/clean install, you need to re-install VAIO Power Management.

 

The more I think of all the posts of this thread, the more I think I did not solve the problem -- there was no problem on the battery, just people didn't breaking in their battery properly or at all. After you use the battery enough, it breaks itself in and the issue is minimized or reduced. However, if you did do the right breaking in cycles (complete discharge and then complete recharge), you will resolve the issue quite quickly.

 

hey thanks!
umm, will this program 'tie up' with any of the vaio management program?

 

no !! this program just a software which do change between profiles !! and it's don't related to any other software or hardware !!

 

ummm hamud,
so from this page;
http://www.codeplex.com/vistabattery/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16555#ReleaseFiles

i just download the Beta 2 R2 Installation?

 

Can anyone confirm this?

 

I did that right after I got my laptop...

 

aamsel is right tho, shut down batter with the AC adapter plugged in, and when the green light goes off quickly remove it, then if u gonna turn the laptop on, plug in the ac adapter = 0% loss

 

can anyone tell me how you can charge the battery up to 100% again?
read somewhere but just thought i'd ask here?
mine is stuck charging at 79%

 

Find the options for Battery Care Utility and in the Advanced tab you should be able to select 100%.

 

Just to report my findings;

ok, i have tried draining the battery to 0%,
charging it back to 100% and repeat~

I've done this about 3 times now and i did notice a significant improvement.

What happened is that as you know, to drain the battery to 0%, the Z will automatically hibernate at 3%. Then we'll leave it for 10 hours which should drain an additional 6% making it 0%

The 1st time I had done this, I cannot switch on the Z without the help of the AC power supply.

The 2nd time I had done this, I still cannot switch on the Z without the help of the AC power supply.

However, the 3rd time I had done this, I am able to switch on the Z without the help of power supply. The battery states 1%. I am assuming that every single time I do this the drainage is perhaps reduced by 2% each time (theoretically speaking that is)

My 3rd time referring to THIS MORNING when I just switch on my Z.
If things remain constant, that means now 10 hours will drain about 2% which is normal i suppose. But I have no tried draining the battery from 100% (Perhaps will do so after my 7th tries. I just want to see if I can still switch on the Z without the help of the AC Adapter just like today)

 

My Vaio Z is supposed to be delivered on tuesday. So I will test this this week with a Z590 CTO right out of the box. I will let you know my findings

 

i returned my z after hearing these kinds of problems, this includes the Double letter typing... and squeeky keys.. im getting a macbook instead...
FtW, i did have this battery drain problem thingy, but not the double typing yet... so im still good.. HAHHA.. anyways have fun wit the defective Z's

 

just for being such a smartass...i hope your macbook completely fails on you

 

I see many people asking how to fully discharge a laptop .. What I do I just boot from a bootable USB or DVD and run some intensive software .. like defrag, scandisk or anything like that. If no software is available just do a copy of a bigger folder, that will easily kill the 3% left in the battery.

After that, my laptop won't even light up, no button will turn it ON what so ever. Nothing else besides pluging the power adapter and after 5 seconds it will respond to the Power button

 

Make sure you understand what GLOSSY means in the Apple world !! I just returned my MBP for that only reason. Do NOT take it light, it might be a HUGE issue for you. Basically, it's a mirror (at full 100% brightness) when darker colors are displayed on the monitor.

 

No need. He'll have to put up with OS X's terrible software compatabilities, and then when he goes to dual boot XP/Vista, he'll see his macbooks battery life cut in half (as shown on anandtech's review of the new macbooks).

 

Dont be mad, just return ur sony vaio z, i know ur thinkin about it too,, its faulty thx

 

all good no problemo for me

 

go suck a .. mines pretty big

 

i used to want to get macbook air but its wierd how it's thinner BUT heavier then the Z.

Ummm, the battery drain problem is still there
even after i drain it to 0 several times.
I guess the only way to solve this is just to take out the battery
if you're not using it~