Vaio CW Battery Drain Information

same here.

I had 30% from 1 hr a few days ago.

 

Thought I would chip in here. I have the new CW2Z1E which suffers extremely badly from battery drain! This is a complete deal breaker for me as I do a lot of travelling so need a reliable machine.

An example from earlier is that I had about 1hr30 reported as remaining on the battery whilst working on the train. I shut it down (not sleep or hibernate!) and turned it on for clients to have a look at something and it was down to 7% reporting it had less than 20 minutes left and I had to find a power supply! I wasn't intending to use it for more than 30mins so didnt even think I would need to hook it up to AC.

I have two other laptops - a HP and a Lenovo T61 and neither of them suffer from this. Sony can sod right off if they say all laptops suffer from this or it is meant to happen. Why should I spend £800 on a laptop for it to require being plugged in all the time to work reliably? All I need is a laptop that lasts about 2hrs30 or so for the train journey and that's it. I used to charge the Lenovo and it would last over 4 hours on the extended battery and NEVER suffer from battery drain. I would hardly have to charge it during the week. The Sony is charged at night and by morning I have 70% or so left and when shut down after an hour of use it various again from what I left it at!

I love the laptop, the design, how crisp the screen is and the power for playing the odd game or two, but having a laptop that can't be relied on for battery work is shocking at £800

I was waiting for this laptop for months and cannot see another laptop from a different supplier that can do the same job in a small package? I'm going to have to return the CW due to the battery drain issue, so if somoene knows of an equivalent machine from another manufacturer I'm all ears!

Out of interest, does the battery drain problem happen on Linux? I have read articles about Windows 7 itself not charging batteries fully and then reporting inaccurate times which could appear as battery drain? Does the same thing happen on a non-windows 7 build out of interest?

 

Does anyone report the battery drain with the CW22FX version?

 

So the day I got this laptop I was using skype and other things with full brightness and the battery said 2hours 20 minutes remaining.. after a day or so after I can never get it above 2 hours even with brightness all the way down and nothing on. Did i do something wrong? hahaha is there a more accurate program to show my battery info? is windows just screwing up?

 

OK I charged the battery fully last night (turned off battery care) and used CPUID hardware monitor to look at the battery status. Here is what I found:

2300 - Fully charged - Battery reports 50610 mWh - I then turned it off and unplugged from AC.

0740 - Turn laptop on - 94% remaining - 47650 mWh reported capacity - 4hrs remaining on battery according to Windows. I then turn on a full screen standard definition avi file.

0830 - With powersave mode, GPU underclocked, brightness at half, wifi, etc off - 45 mins of video - 67% remaining - 34160 mWh capacity left - 2hrs 14 remaining according to Windows. Laptop is then turned off and packed away.

0900 - 30 mins later turned on in office - 48% remaining - 24460 mWh capacity remaining according to CPUID monitor - 1hr 12 remaining

0930 - 30 mins later of using just office based tasks on FULL brightness - Windows STILL shows 48% remaining - 24320 mWh remaining according to CPUID and it has only just started to count down. For the last 30 mins the monitor in CPUID showed 24460 mWh and didn't move. It is now going down by 10 mWh every 20 seconds or so as normal - 1hr 50mins remaining according to Windows.

Now what this shows is that for 30 minutes it reported being on the same battery capacity and didn't move. In the 30 minutes I took to get to the office it went from 67% to 48% which is a drop of close to 20%! Shocking I thought, but then I noticed it didn't change for 30 minutes after that. CPUID hardware monitor didn't show the battery as discharging during this time either. Maybe this is linked into the windows battery counter so cannot be trusted? But it shows the capacity draining now but Windows is still showing 48%?!

It definitely appears that Windows 7 is having problems interrogating the battery level so if anyone has done PHYSICAL tests on the battery charge level that would be awsome to find out if it is physically discharging? I'm now going to run my laptop until it turns itself off at work. This will give me an overall charge to discharge time. I'm going to ignore the windows values as last night it reported 7% remaining but didnt move off this figure for over 20 minutes. The annoying thing with this problem though is that the laptop turns on, reports 7% remaining and wants to go to hibernate even though the battery isn't actually at 7%. I may have to drop the hibernate timers to the lowest they can go because if I turn the laptop off at 20% charge, when I turn it on again 30 minutes later I am always being given a MUCH lower value and the laptop wants to go into hibernate. I do not know why this happens, but the lower value is then frozen and doesn't go down. Not a problem at 40%, but if it then forces the laptop to go to hibernate it is completely stupid.

 

My apologies if this sounds harsh... But this has ALL been discussed in the Z series owners' battery drain thread.

You will notice that after the 'drain' the battery level will not change (at least, decrease according to windows) for a good half an hour or so.
We came up with quite a decent number of theories, and as adament as aan310 is claiming that the battery care setting is consuming something, most of us (at least, from the Z battery drain thread) do not believe that's causing the drain.

If that was the case, we simply wouldn't have installed VAIO CONTROL CENTRE (which has the battery care settings) when clean installing our windows, and we would have performed the clean install with the battery charged at 100% (ie, battery care not set). We found that if we set the battery care at (say) 80% and performed a clean windows install, the battery would not charge beyond 80% (despite windows saying 80%), even though VAIO CONTROL CENTRE was NOT installed. Only after installing were we able set the battery care settings again. That indicates that the battery is 'told' to charge to a certain level, that the battery has a certain chipset to hold that memory in a command bank.

In regards to windows (and CPUID for that matter) not showing changes in battery levels for a long while, for this we believe Sony's batteries come with 'crap' sensors. That is, the battery level sensors that tell windows the battery level are not doing their job properly, not telling windows correct information. This, as you may imagine, may cause all sorts of charging / indicator issues that I won't dwell on here.

All in all, W7 is extremely accurate in reading battery levels than Vista and earlier. But that's all useless since Sony didn't put in good sensors in the battery assembly itself.

Don't get me wrong though, there is still a drain going on no matter how off the sensors are. And I still stand by my conclusion (looking at aan310); we need a BIOS update to get all the hardware to just simply SHUT-DOWN, and not go into a NON-OFF, power-saving state. Just note, if I leave my battery detached off the Z (and this should apply to the CW too), the battery does NOT suffer drain. If I shut down and leave the battery attached to the lappie (and travel around with it, as laptops are designed for), only then does it experience drain. Which tells us that something is still running on a 'presumably' shut-down machine. Though leaving a battery detached does defeat the purpose of having a portable computer...

 

Put a video on to stress battery and it has run out at at 1100. So that is about 1hr 20 mins of divx video and about 1hr 20mins of office work before the battery is dead.

Out of interest, how much extra drain will a 3G USB dongle take out of the battery? I know the iPhone lasts a lot less, but then again that has a tiny battery.

 

A maximum of 500mW... as that's how much is supplied by a standard usb port.

 

So what would this be in real world use? Not very much I assume?

 

Anyone try use a generic battery? non sony battery
All these Vaio uses the BPS/BLP model battery?
I think there's a problem in battery and its sensors.

I have a Vaio CW21FX and have the same problem it's annoying

 

I'm sorry but I still think it's the Battery Care function as being the main (but maybe not the only) culprit and particulary the battery itself and how it holds the setting in its IC memory, like you have mentioned. So I reckon we need to take a closer look at how it's actually implemented.

Let's say that I'm using Linux and the battery is already set to 80% Battery Care. How does the embedded controller, responsible for the charging functions, on the laptop know whether I'm set to 80%, 50% or 100%? Remember that the setting is only known to the battery itself and the laptop BIOS does not know this 'secret'.

500 mW equals 0.5 watt.
So, on a 50Wh battery it would, in theory, use up an extra 'one percent' of your battery life every hour. This doesn't take into consideration the extra power on the other components like the CPU that's needed allow that USB modem to function.

 

I've read a post by someone saying that he used linux and had to dual boot with Vista to set the battery care level as he set it to 80% in Vista before wiping and moving to Linux. The battery would still only charge to 80% so he had to install Vista to reset it to 100%

Has anyone considered the fact that that it could just be crappy build quality inside? If some people are saying their Vaios are OK and some aren't then surely that rules out software?

I'm almost done with the office for the day and have been running on battery this afternoon. Battery is showing 28% with 1 hour to go (been on battery for the last 2.5 hours just doing office work so thats about right).

I bet when I shut down and start it up again in an hours time the battery will say it requires charging. If it does I am going to do the same test again tomorrow but this time take the battery out after shutting down, wait a few seconds then put it back in again. Then test if it has run out by the time I get home again. I can "possibly" live with doing that, but having to take the battery out and carry it seperately is silly as the battery compartment will just fill with crap over time and be even more of a nightmare!

 

Maybe we should try 3rd party batteries?

Also,lets try to reach blogs like gizmodo and engadget and ask them to spread the story!

 

Wow thats actually not a bad idea. Engadget did the review for the Z but I feel like the readership of Gizmodo would be larger. Losing several % of battery power overnight is unheard of for most other laptop manufacturers though I've only had Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo as well as another Sony laptop in the past. The older Sony's didn't do it so why the change all of a sudden.

It seems like the problem is inherent to the new lineup of sony laptops so it might be a good topic to try to send in. How would one go about doing that? the whole battery drain thing might even be an evil ploy by sony to force people into buying laptop batteries.

 

regarding the battery drain issue, a FW vaio user found a explanation about the vaio battery issue in other thread. ( I also posted in F series thread...)


(quoted from Sony site: http://www.sony-asia.com/support/faq/240494)

Why does the VAIO computer consume battery even when the power is completely switched off?
Article ID : 240494 (modified02/22/2008 01:00:00)
Question:

When a computer with a fully charged battery is shut down and started again after few days, the battery has consumed a lot.
Answer:

The battery will consume its power even when the power is switched off due to the following reasons.

1.When the battery is connected to the VAIO computer, it will use the power to backup the Real Time Clock (RTC) function..
2. The power button of the computers which are designed after PC97 has the function called software switch.
The power button does not directly switch on/off the computer. It simply sends the signal to the power control management..
Due to this software switch function, the power control management is always turned on and ready to receive the signals when the battery or AC adapter is connected. As a result, there's power consumption.

Note: PC97 is advocated by Microsoft, which is for better running of Windows 95, Windows NT and the other operating systems.

3. VAIO battery has a function to monitor battery status and to send signals to the computer regularly. This function works even when the power of the computer turned off.

The battery consumption for different models differs even in the same environment. The battery which has less capacity consumes power faster.


if this is the case, there is no hope to fix the issue ?

 

LOL.. PC97 was a Hardware Design Guideline that ended in 2001. PC97 actually is about the correct color labeling of the Purple and Green mouse/keyboard PS/2 connectors. This Sony rep was srsly on crack. The interface between the battery and the OS or UEFI is called ACPI.

 

Hello all. First time poster here.

I have read much of the discussion related to the Vaio battery drain issue, but still decided to buy a CW. I now have the VPCCW27FX from Best Buy.

I am currently experimenting with the battery drain on mine, and I would like to raise a question for those of you still interested in solving this issue: when shutting down your Vaio, have you tried the "Shutdown" option in the "Exit" menu of the BIOS?

I left my computer sitting with the battery plugged in today for eight hours and still had 0% drain. Here is what I did: (1) charge the laptop battery to 100%, (2) leaving power cord in enter the BIOS menu and find the "Shutdown" option under the "Exit" menu, (3) unplug the power cord, wait five seconds, and choose "Shutdown", (4) wait for however long you want (I waited 8 hours), leaving the battery plugged into the laptop, (5) after the time has passed, remove the battery, (6) plug in the power cord and boot up to your favorite OS, (7) replace your battery after your OS boots up and check drainage.

I should mention a couple of things here:

(1) I have not even booted up Windows on my machine yet (been checking battery status with "envstat" command in the Jibbed NetBSD Live CD from http://www.jibbed.org). I accidentally started the first boot into Windows because I forgot to put my live cd in, but I unplugged the power to the laptop and stopped the boot before I got very far. Not sure if booting Windows would affect the battery drain, but I know some of you might believe that Windows-based Vaio software is causing the problem.

(2) I haven't yet tried this method with other ways of shutting down the system, so I don't even know if my battery will drain at all.

I would really appreciate if someone (preferably with the same model) followed the steps outlined above and posted back with their results. I will try to shut down using different methods (to see if my battery drains at all) tonight and post back what I find.

Cheers.

Edit: I also have wireless turned off and no peripherals connected. I did not change any settings anywhere that I am aware of.

 

As a side note to my previous post. I am curious what the cap (or maximum) is on the battery charge in the default settings of Vaio Battery Care. My battery charged to 100% out of the box, but I haven't yet run the Vaio utilities.

 

My experiences have been 100%, unless you specify a battery care percentage.

 

thanks inj for your experiments im pretty sure so far no one have done , what you are doing now.

 

I am one of the ones that suffers large battery drain when the machine is turned off and turned on again 30 mins later. I am due to head back on the train today after being in the office and know from experience that if I turn it off in the office and go to the train I will have about 80% or so left according to Windows. One time it was 78%!

The trip on the train is 2hrs 40mins constantly watching a DVD and the battery lasts that long and has a bit of juice left (not much) whether the battery shows 80% or 95% when I get on the train. The indicator shows 80% but the battery charge lasts just as long because the 80% counter stays like that for 15 mins or so and then starts to go down. It's as if it is reporting the wrong battery amount for some reason then waits for the battery to actually catch up? This isn't proving a physical issue for me UNLESS I leave the laptop with around 28% charge. Then when it boots into windows it will shutdown straight away as it thinks the battery is empty....

Obviously the drain DOES exist if left on overnight becaue the battery lasts less, but the wrong percentage of battery charge being reported after 30 minutes of shutdown time doesn't appear to affect battery performance, but is more a cosmetic issue?

This leads me to two problems:

1. The battery does physically drain if left for, say, 24 hours
2. The second problem is that if turned off for 30 minutes and then back on again it will report back having lost 20-30% of the charge in windows, but the battery lasts just as long as if it reported having 95% battery?! This is a cosmetic issue but affects windows because even though I left the battery at 30% battery it reports it as 5% or so remaining and shuts the machine down.

I am currently charged to 100% in the office so will reboot into the BIOS and shutdown from there. I will report back on what happens and what battery amount is left when I get on the train 30 minutes after leaving the office.

Mine is just over a week old but the shop I have bought from are refusing to refund the product. After calling Sony they are sending out a new battery this week so I will see if this fixes the problem. I don't have high hopes though and it is really annoying to leave the office with 30% charge and arrive at a meeting only to find the laptop wont turn on because it keeps saying "Please plug in an AC adapater". I never had these problems with the Lenovo or HP products and won't buy a Sony again after experiencing their "technical support" which is shocking. They promise to call back and never do and I don't think they have even seen a laptop before. They kept claiming that losing 30% of battery within half an hour of being switched off "are within specs and perfectly normal for a laptop"... Well if that's within specs I'm staying with a different brand which produces quality instead! I had to battle hard to get a replacement battery and if that doesn't fix anything I'm going to a Solicitor about getting a refund!

 

#2 raises the problem that I've been pining over for a while now. Sony doesn't have proper control over the ACPI control subsystem that reports back battery information to the OS. There's a flaw in there somewhere and I'm still searching for it.

 

Totality,

I have the exact same issues that you do. Incorrect battery reporting coupled with unacceptably fast battery drain with the laptop powered off.

Almost any problem you present to Sony technical support is considered "within operational specifications". Some of the techs are near confrontational in attitude.

The only way Sony will ever look at this issue is if it ends up on the front page of Engadget, Gizmodo, or Digg.

I'll never buy a Sony laptop again. The proprietary drivers, software and bloatware were bad enough, but this battery issue is the real nail in the coffin.

Thanks,
GR

 

Wow you just talked me out of a CW.

 

sadly this isnt just CW issue.
all the sony vaio laptops are having similar drain problems
there is no way im buying sony vaios if im prioritizing portability and battery life
no other laptop i had before had this much of drain
only solution I can think of is to unplug the battery everytime i need to shutdown and carry around
this is sad, cw and other models like F , z are all solid laptops that fits my taste.

 

I gave this a try on my cw26 and when I booted into Win7 and plugged in the battery it shows 99%. I let the battery sit for about 8 hours.

 

Last night I shut down the CW via the BIOS option, let it sit all night with the battery plugged in and no charger.

At the office now and booted up @ 100% with the AC power back.

How can we get the mobo to do this manual shutdown on its own along with a standard Windows shut down?

 

No one wants to seperate the battery and carry it around but I've tried a few tests and I dont believe you need to do that to stop Battery Drain.

Test 1: Charge to 100%, Shutdown, Battery Out, AC off, wait 20 mins, but battery back in - then go to bed! 8 hours later, AC in, Battery in, startup, still at 100% no drain at all! AC out just to check it's not telling lies - still 100% - excellent!

So the question is; "what is the minimum time the battery has to be removed to stop the background processes running through the night?".

Well last night I got it down to 60 seconds. My suspicion is that the final figure will be a few seconds but tests take time so I'm not there yet.

So to stop battery drain you don't need to remove the battery you just need to 'flip and lift' to disconnect it for a few seconds and then drop it back in.

I agree we shouldn't have to do this, but it's way easier than other methods.

Top tip - the software displaying battery life etc is not very good so when assessing the results of your tests give it a few minutes to settle down. Also during tests always start it up and powerdown with the AC in or it will take 3% to 5% off your battery figure and mess up your tests.

Be good to know if others find this works for them and what's the minimum time of disconnect. Good Luck

 

this is a great suggestion. However I would like to add that this solution won't work for people who are using suspend for obvious reasons!

 

I have shut down from the BIOS and powered up again to see a massive loss in reported battery life only an hour after turning it off. The difference is I was on the train so could not plug in the AC adapter when powering it on. The battery power didnt report falling below what it was reported when it booted into windows for about 20 minutes or so. It just sat there on 78%. This isn't a problem unless you boot up when not on AC when you shut it down at 30%. Windows will say there is around 7% left and bug you to plug in an AC adapter.

I have received new batteries from Sony this week and the problem still exists so I am not accepting it and have written a massive letter of complaint to the shop I bought it from, trading standards and BBC Watchdog. I am now demanding a full refund and will not stop until I receive it. Sony "support" were meant to call me back this week to see how the new batteries have worked out but of course they never did and I refuse to speak to them again just to have them not listen and say "it is within spec". NO. It isn't! I'm taking the laptop to a 3rd party computer company at the weekend to get it certified as faulty and in perfect condition then proceeding with a small claims court action if the shop won't issue a refund. That way if Sony claim that it isn't faulty I have external certified proof that no other laptops do what this laptop does. If it goes to court I will take in my Lenovo, HP and Sony laptop and turn them all on in a row to demonstrate this shocking behaviour. If I hear nothing back from the shop's customer complaints people I shall also send a copy to Engadget and any other list of sites people recommend. It's a long read at a few pages long but fully describes the problem and the experience I have had with Sony support. The more publicity this gets the better and given that I work in IT and fix laptops for a living I know exactly how to write the report and provide the relevant information.

I will update people on how I get on as time goes by, but I'm not keeping this £800 piece of junk. I could maybe expect issues from a cheap product, but not one costing this much. I expected better from Sony when I went out to buy a portable laptop. There's nothing portable about it as I have to keep plugging it in!

 

I would be curious if any sony reps have ever seen this thread.

I have not had a chance to test mine out to see if suffers from battery drain. However I do see the problem where windows reports the wrong battery level after being shutdown over night. When you start it back up it just camps at a specific percentage for a long time and then suddenly starts to move. Hopefully this issue is not beyond a bois patch or driver update. But it could very well be at the hardware level. It really is a a shame since in all other ways this laptop is a really nice package (well maybe a little large but that is personal preference).

Oh BTW I have the CW21 so yeah it is also affected at least by the bad battery reporting. I will try to test the battery drain issue to see if that is a problem as well. It will be a few days until I can test it since I will be slammed for the next 5 days with life...

 

Hi All,

After toying between F-series, Dell Studio15 and a CW I bit last week on the 27FX from BB. I wanted to say thanks to the authors of the threads here - first thing I did was re-install Windows, etc and the machine is doing well. I don't really regret passing on the full HD screen - at least yet.

I received my 27FX from BB last week and have been following this thread. After initially seeing similar battery drain numbers - 10% over a few hours, I tried shutting down via the BIOS. I've tried this twice now and both times the reported battery life on restart is the same as it was before shutting down and leaving it overnight. Note I didn't follow the exact instructions posted - just restarted, went into the bios menu and shutdown from there.

It's not a perfect fix, but something I can use for the occasions where I know I am going to need a good charge on the battery like flights, etc. It also points (IMHO) to something that can be patched.

Cheers,
Larry

 

I have been following this thread, and I did some testing also, not the one mentioned via the bios shutdown though. Even if my battery is reported to have been drained during the night, I have the same amount of time left on it.

 

Hehe, i called it! something not fully shutting down! woo!


Any way... Now we need to figure out why the ACPI in windows is not having this turn off... Hmmmm

 

OK Further to my comment above I have now had time to try and 'Flip and Lift' the battery for just 2 seconds and that worked fine, after 5 hours I was still at 100%. So although this approach won't work for Suspend mode (thanks for the heads up 'evident'), the above approach seems to work fine and stops battery drain completly with only a tiny amount of extra effort.

No thanks to Sony

 

just confirmed that I have this battery drain problem as well. I have a VPCCW27FX from best buy. Charged my Laptop to 100% last night, unplugged it, put it in suspend and coming home from work i turned it back on.... down to 70%!!!

We need to get sony to pay attention to this thread, as this is obviously NOT isolated!!! Have they even acknowledged this problem yet?


and I will try the flip and lift method tonight. I'll charge my laptop to 100% and put it into hibernate, then do a flip and lift. hopefully it won't drain any battery overnight!

 

I got my VPCCW27FX from Best Buy a few days ago. I read through this thread several times before deciding to buy it and I finally did. I don't know whether to regret it or not now. I'm experiencing the battery drain that everybody else has and since I'm a first time laptop user, I'm terrified of performing a clean install and messing up something in the system. I have noticed that the battery meter is terribly inaccurate. Today I was using it and it read '98% - 1:24' about an hour later it said '92% - 2:45' of power left. I really wish Sony would do SOMETHING about it and not just push it to the side as if it's not a problem. They could at least acknowledge that there is a problem with the laptops.

 

Well, once my new one is here (and if it actually works) sony will not like me. because i WILL be hounding them daily to try to get this fixed. Part of it is just a horrible battery sensor in the battery it's self (for chancake's issue) but that being said battery life depends on what you are doing and background processes too.
But any way... Sony will hate me after i get my working laptop. They better hope that i get sent another dud xD (don't let that scare you, im jsut unlucky with new computers. I have yet to get a brand new computer that did not come out of the box with issues, where as i have had 0 issues with used)

 

what's the best way to contact sony about this battery drain problem?

 

Hey guys, looks like we made front page on Engadget!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/25/sonys-vaio-cw-draining-the-battery-while-asleep/

Hopefully, Sony will see this and release something of a BIOS update for us!

I've been following this thread closely and have the CW27 from Best Buy. For the most, I have tried shutting down from the BIOS and to no avail still get the battery drain from at least 10%. I have also tried lifting the battery for 2 seconds and popping it back in, that on average seems to have a lesser drain.

I think what actually worked for me was from a previous poster who disconnected the battery for a certain amount of time so that the internals of the computer were discharged, and then popping the battery back in. I did this for like 5 minutes, popped the battery back in, and then 6-7 hours later experienced a 1-2% battery drain.

I hope there's a fix soon for this, the CW series seem pretty popular. Other than the battery drain issue, the CW27 is just blazing fast and suits my needs.

 

Battery drain of up to 10% per hour in Sleep mode is normal.
Edit: Sorry for the mistake. The drain should 1-2% per hour during sleep.

 

You are welcome

 

Thanks aan310, was too lazy to go back to the previous post to find the poster haha

 

Well, my replacement is here, so i gotta get all my stuff loaded on and make sure it's 100% working, then i will make a few emails and calls to Sony and see what I can get done.

Does any one know the naming scheme/departments and levels for sony support? (ex. Gateway has a Teir 1/2/3/4/5 Software Development and Support team)

 

And my screenshot for the batterycare is on there! I'm semi famous...LOL.

 

Woo! go us!


P.S. Guess what guys?! MY BLUETOOTH DOESN'T WORK!!!

Hahah... w/e im still keeping it if nothing else is wrong, because im sick of sending these back and forth. xD

 

no, it really is not. All of my previous laptops could have been left in sleep for days before draining out completely. i can leave my Dell D620 work laptop in sleep for a week ( i've done this before) and it will still have about 50% battery life left. I've left my personal acer laptop w/ vista 64bit in sleep for the weekend and would pretty much still have a full charge (roughly 90%)

you are suggesting that after 9 hours of sleep mode your laptop is going to be dead? that's completely unacceptable!

 

I am sorry. I made a mistake in my previous post, the battery drain should be 1-2% per hour during sleep.
Quoted from this link: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Turn-off-a-computer-frequently-asked-questions

 

Glad to see it has made it to Engadget. Pity the article doesnt state that the battery drains when OFF and not just in sleep. Would have made people look at it even more as a fault than just in sleep mode.

The retailer my end has agreed to refund so I am now free of Sony!! Their support never called back in the end, but I don't care anymore as the laptop and battery Sony sent are safely back with the retailer and I have my money back. I'm now looking at a completely different brand

 

Sorry for the slow time to post. Thank you to the couple of people who ran a shutdown test from the BIOS. Sorry to see that it didn't help everyone. I have tried using the method in post #67 on a Factory Windows Install (shut down from windows in this case) and Ubuntu Live CD, and still did not have battery drain. Not sure if this indicates that I don't have battery drain or if my test is flawed.