VPC-Z Battery Life - what are you getting?

Just wondered if I could enquire as to what sort of battery time people are getting out of their Zs?

I have a Z12M9E/B (1600x900, i5, no backlit keyboard) with a Newmodeus caddy installed, using a WD Scorpio blue. It has a standard battery.

I'm currently getting a bit under 3 hours surfing the web on wifi. Is this normal? And if not, what should it be and how should I get it to last that long?

I'm sure I've heard people talking about 5 hours...

Thanks

 

On speed mode with full brightness, bluetooth and flash, this is normal. Do you have the Sony thermal setting set to performance? How about Windows power settings?

 

Sorry, forgot to mention that's in stamina mode. Thermal setting is admittedly on performance. Brightness is just less than 50%, bluetooth off, windows power is on Balance.

 

around five hours with the extended battery

 

That will do it. If your in stamina mode, there is no reason for performance or balanced power settings. Thats the idea of stamina

Set it to Sony-balanced/Win-power savings.

Do you have a 1080p screen?

 

Okay, I'll give that a shot. Should I change the thermal settings as well?

Still interested to hear what other people are getting...

 

I get 3.5-4 hours. Major disappointment considering the specs. A comparable Thinkpad to the Z in Stamina mode get's about 8.

 

If there was a thinkpad with the specs of the Z, I would have purchased it.

 

Hmm don't really have a problem with battery life on my 1080P Z with thermal settings set to balanced.

With the 6-cell
On Stamina (~40% brightness, wifi): Around 3,5 - 4 hours

With the 9-Cell
On stamina @ ~40% brightness, wifi, some vmware: at least 6,5 hours usually around 7,5.

 

What is your ssd configuration? There is a known issue using a HDD in the ODD bay if you have a quad-ssd rig.

 

I know. I was definitely under the impression that it lasted longer than that when I bought it. MacBooks also have much better batteries.

I have the 128gb - so dual raid. Hence the requirement for the extra hard drive! I had seen the threads about the quad SSD before I bought the caddy, thankfully not affected by it. Just noticed that the battery seemed quite poor compared to expectations. Averagely surprised that there aren't more threads about battery life?

 

How long have you bought your computer?

I am proud to say that mine lasts 5 hours and 15 minutes (yes, I actually tested without looking at the status in windows) browsing normal websites (not those heavy on Java, no games, no youtube, etc.). My test config was Wifi on, Bluetooth off, Stamina mode, Balanced fan strategy, Brightness up at 3 notches (out of 8).

Did you enable windows media sharing or a service like that? I remember one period of time my battery also dropped to 3 hours and 30 minutes when that was enabled, and once I removed it the battery went up to 5+ hours again. Go into task manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE)>Performance>Resource Monitor and check for that.

I have the 64x4 (256 GB) SSD configuration BTW.

 

Good Tip! Thanks for that.

 

Found the exact executable file. It's wmpnetwk.exe. If it does appear on Resource Monitor, google it and you can easily find a way how to disable it.

 

VPCZ122GX/B here. I get around 3.5-4 hours when doing light surfing using Stamina, 2-4 brightness (out of 8), WiFi on, BT off, nothing too intense like videos or flash games.

It's usually 4 hours exactly, but drops to 3.5 if I do some CPU intense stuff (youtube videos, etc.). Using the standard battery.

This is using Windows XP btw (in theory 7 is supposed to better). Adaptive CPU, quiet thermal strategy.

 

Macs don't have much better battery's, it's OSX that's throttled like a . Install Win 7 on one and you will get the same average performance. Under OSX, run real apps and watch the battery drain.

While OSX is optimized well for mom and dad, real workers know their battery's are the same as usual.

 

I get between 3.5 - 4 hrs on Stamina:

Stamina Mode:

WiFi off.
Bluetooth off.
DVD Drive off.
CPU: max 50%
Brightness: 50%
Refresh Rate: 40hz
Sounds: Mute
LAN cable connected.

Activities:
Visual Studio 2010
Mozilla (debugging only)

Performance is still superb! What do you guys think? Can I do better?

EDIT:
My Specs:
i7-640m
8GB RAM
256GB SSD (64x4)
FHD

 

What makes you think osx is "throttling like xxx"? Macbook pro on batteries hits same #'s in benchmarks on batteries as they do when plugged in.

The fact is OSX is far more energy efficient and Apple has somehow done a MUCH better job with the hardware as it relates to energy efficiency.

Under heavy load, obviously life is similar to windows machine but during light web browsing a 2011 MBP uses 6-8W of power and can get down under 6W at dead idle. My Z set to stamina and similar brightness uses 10-13W and can only get down to about 9 at dead idle.

Apple doesn't do everything better, but they win in energy efficiency hands-down.

Anyhow my Z now sees around 4.5-5 hours of light browsing with the standard battery and about 7-7.5 with the high-cap.

 

Hey beaups how long have you owned your Z? Mines officially half a year old a week ago and I haven't experienced too much battery deterioration yet. Though originally my Z was almost able to hit 5 hours and 45 mins, and now it's more closer to 5 hours and 15 minutes.

Is it ok to exercise the battery and *kill* it by OCing the GPU and playing an online multiplayer game through WiFi? Battery drops really quick that way (>1% per minute) and is slightly horrifying but I've heard that exercising the battery like that is good.

 

^I use batterybar to measure consumption and degredation. My Z is about 16 months old (if I recall correctly). My original battery is about 20% degraded, but I have lots of extras The # I am providing is with a new (only 1.5% degraded battery).

Honestly I don't know much about exercising, calibrating, etc. I get a new computer every year or so and I get new batteries in between if I need them. I "just use it"

 

I got my Z13 in Feb 2011, on stamina mode its 4.5 hrs. Speed mode not known at the moment. Brighness set to 3 bars out of 8. WWAN off WLAN on Bluetooth off.

I'm happy with the performance, but will be getting the larger battery in the near future.

 

On an average day at uni, these are the conditions:
- Connected to Wifi with a Cisco app running
- Brightness at 5 or 7/10
- Adobe Reader open with lecture notes
- OneNote open and typing notes
- A bit of distracting Facebook on Firefox 4
- Antivirus turned off
- Stamina mode

BatteryBar shows my discharge rate at around 8000mWh, fluctuating by around 400mWh on average. While using heavy flash sites on Firefox 4, it jumps up to 12000mWh. I'm using the extended battery, which has a reported capacity of 89260mWh by BatteryBar, so at the rate I'm going, it should be able to do over 10 hours if I'm just typing notes and doing light browsing.

 

I’m very disappointed with the battery life on my VPC Z. I get around 3 hours on stamina with Bluetooth Wwan off, brightness 50%. I might buy the extended battery, also my sound quality is quite poor but apart from that it’s the best laptop in its class.

 

I configured my Z to reach the max battery life I could:

VAIO VPC-Z11A7E (i520, 4Gb, 128Gb SSD, no WAN, no back-lighted keyboard)
Installed clean Windows Seven Pro and updated all drivers directly from constructors, also using unofficial GPU drivers. Using BatteryBar.

Battery life settings :

Windows power scheme Battery life
Brightness min
Stop disks after 1 min
Processor max 0%
Refresh rate 40Hz
Colors 16bits
Thermal setting silent (from VAIO CC)
Wifi and Bluetooth off
Intel GPU performance scheme battery life (from Intel GPU panel)
Wireless card at max power saving
Ethernet at max power saving (from drivers properties)
DVD drive off
Hibernate at 1%
Usage: Office 2010 (Word, Excel), all usual services loaded in background (Antivirus...)
Result : Didn't reach the end, more than 8 hours working...

Same settings but Wifi On and surfing : 6 hours max
Same settings but brightness 50% (auto) Wifi On and surfing : 5 - 5,5 hours max.

This is good to know, but it is not comfortable to use the laptop with theses settings, mainly because Aero is turned off (16bits) and the screen is flickering (40Hz).

So, my usual settings: Same settings but brightness 50% (auto), screen at 60Hz and 32bits, Wifi On and surfing : 4 - 5 hours max.

EDIT : After 10 months using my Z with battery always plugged, loading at 100% and discharging it almost every days, BatteryBar gives me 3% of battery usage.

 

Thanks for the info. Would anyone else care to chip in about the optimum settings for long battery life, without compromising too much on usability? Including settings such as thermal performance etc?

 

It would also be interesting to know if people are using the battery care function.

 

I didn't initially, but I started recently around a month ago. Battery degregation hasn't been too bad so far. One interesting point to note though, if I don't use BC function and charge my PC to 100%, a few hours later when I boot it up again it becomes 92-93% full. The BC function stops this effect somehow, as I get 79-80% when I boot up my computer again after fully charged at 80%.

 

I have a VPC 11, i5-520, 4GB, 128GB, 1600 X 900
Using Stamina, WF on, BT off, brightness 4/8, power plan Powersave (with tweaks to improve it)

6 cell (std) battery: 3.5-5 4.5hrs (depending on how many windows open, how much flash/java running in browsers, etc)

Here's the kicker:

9 cell high cap battery: 6-8 hrs, consistently! In other words, 50% more capacity seems to get me more like 75% more battery life. And I happen to like the bump-up - improves typing position and ventilation. After an hour, you don't notice the weight difference.

In short: Get the high capacity battery (Sony version avail on eBay for $150) and this gets batt life in line with MBP and X220 with std battery - but you are using a Z!!!

 

I have a z13 - 6 cell std battery... i manage just over 3 hours with normal usage in stamina mode and good brightness level, not power saving.
with nvidia, it goes down quickly, only lasting 1hr 45min.

i customized a power scheme to lower the cpu clock and brightness and all that, and it still only manages 4hr 30m ...

but it could last pretty long just staying idle, over 7 hours.

i7-640m, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd (128 x2), 900p, backlit keyboard, performance thermal setting, wi-fi always on.

gps, bt, wwan off always.

i've had it for 8 months now, and battery wear is at 7%.

i always keep it charged at 80% though.