VPC-Z Sleep battery life

Sorry if answered elsewhere (I've had a quick search..)

Can anyone tell me how long Z will stay in Sleep before battery runs out?

I know it may be CPU and RAM dependant to an extent (does 8G RAM take more power than 4?), but would have thought it insignificant...

Looking to compare this with Apple's claims of 30 days for the new MacBook Air

(Please dont enter other MBA v Z debate here...)

Thanks.

 

First off, you should be aware of the battery drainage issue which the majority of VAIOs today suffer from. There are reports of SOME CW owners not having this issue but most people do.

If you're not aware, in a nutshell VAIOs drain battery dispite being fully shut down. Reports here indicate a fully charged battery is fully drained anywhere from a day of complete shut down (18 hours ish), to me being the longest at 3 weeks (for me though it's an exponential levelling kinda thing; the drainage is quick to about 50% and it starts bottoming out near the 20% mark till about 10%).

That said, some people have said that putting their machines into SLEEP (thus, the pulsing orange glow on the side) is better than a full-shut down altogether.

I would personally advise AGAINST putting a machine to sleep while moving around. There are horror stories around in these forums from those who did, so maybe hibernating is a better solution, though the drainage issue remains in hibernation too.

...but to answer your question. Provided the battery drainage didn't exist, with a fully charged standard battery I'd say a month. With the drainage on a moderate scale, about a week. I say a week dispite moderate drainage as the battery doesn't seem to drain when the VAIO is actually using the battery (ie, the glowing light on the side). Kinda hard to explain in words...

CPU and RAM don't really matter once the machine is in sleep. The OS will do a quick store of the basic files / processes into the RAM flash chips, along with a header file which will allow the machine to refer to the correct HDD index for the bigger files of the OS which can't be stored on RAM. And will turn the hardware off.

Though when the machine sleeps, certain CMOS battery and BIOS functions (ie, the orange light and button feedback) are left on unlike HIBERNATE or SHUT-DOWN, to facilitate for WAKE-UP. And some certain components such as the lid flip sensor depending on your power-profile settings.

...well, I can get hibernating machines to wake-up by flipping open the lid so to me hibernate isn't really any different from sleep, minus the orange pulsing thing on the side.

 

Cool, many thanks for the comprehensive reply.

So anywhere between a week and a month ;-)

yea, horror stories noted.

 

Sleep uses about 1W. 60WH battery means a fully charged battery will be dead in 2.5 days of sleep.

 

I would have assumed < 0.5W considering the majority of power usage from a sleeping machine would be from the ultra-powering-saving-state-yet-active mobo (alas, the week-ish estimate).

I personally haven't tried getting a machine to 'sleep' for a week (let alone a month). So yeah, me and my (horrendously) rough estimates.

 

Thanks guys. To be honest, this will be more than enough for me anyways... Cant imagine not using my Z for more than a day

 

1W is my experience, obviously your mileage may vary.