Vaio Z reviewers getting 9hr battery life!?

Hi all, I have seen a couple of reviews of the Z in the last week with reviews claiming to have got around 9 hours battery life from the machine. Anyone manage to get near this amount? This must be with Wi-fi off, brightness down to min etc, no? Anyone got any other good battery life tips?

 

I think this sounds about right for the extended battery. I can get max 6 hours - of proper usage - out of my Z with standard battery. (I'm sure I could get more than that with the wireless off, screen off, etc... but what's the point in that!?)

Tips for getting good battery life:

- turn off any hardware you're not using (modem, iLink port, DVD, bluetooth, wwan, etc)
- use 'silent' CPU/cooling performance mode
- use a battery saving power profile, and customize it to your minimum requirements
- turn down screen brightness to the lowest value that's comfortable (doesn't work so well outside, sadly!)
- use a 'no flash/no script' plugin for Firefox
- try undervolting your CPU with RMclock (follow the undervolting guide on this forum)

If you do all of the above, you'll easily achieve 5+hrs of light/web/office usage with the standard battery, in my experience.

 

Nice tips InfiMcGirk. Thx!

 

Will you post some links for the reviews of the Z?

 

I have issue 117 of What Laptop magazine infront of me and, I quote:
"Its not cheap, but if you can afford the Z11 it's one of the most impressive laptops currently available. It sets the bar high for power and battery life, and also has the best screen [out of a group test against the Lenovo Thinkpad X300, Toshiba Portege R500-125 and Dell Latitude E6400]. High-quality materials give it a premium feel, and its one of the most comfortable laptops in the group."
It was duly awarded the Gold Award and best in group.
So, yeah its alright

 

Oh and it got 8(/10) for Value for Money, 8 for Performance, 9 for Features and 9 for Build Quality.

 

Here are some reviews of the Z. I have to say that the Trusted Reviews that i read today was not one of the best that i have read. It was a good review and everything but i was surprised to see the much cheaper Samsung model perform so well compared to the Z. It makes me wonder if they even used the stamina mode for battery life which they most probably did. Notebookcheck.com still have not yet reviewed this sytem.


http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2008/10/31/Sony-VAIO-VGN-Z11WN-B-13-1in-Notebook/p1
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/sony-vaio-z-series-vgn-z530n.aspx
http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/638_sony_vaio_vgn_z11vn
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/233496/sony-vaio-vgnz21mnb.html
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/225537/sony-vaio-vgnz11wnb.html
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Sony-Vaio-Z550.htm
http://66.102.9.104/translate_c?hl=...&hl=en&usg=ALkJrhiMQ5yB9WABLq9ViKnD41sXUR2qgg

 

Good list. I can add a couple:
- do a clean install and tweak Vista to run with as little processes and services as possible. The fewer processes you have running, the better battery life.
- disable Aero interface.
- work with applications with small footprint. For example Opera instead of IE, Kompozer instead of Dreamweaver.
- consider dropping AV protection. If you know what you're doing AV isn't all that necessary.

 

They said they use integrated graphics for the battery test. However, I don't think they did any kind of clean-install or bloatware removal and their software suite is crazy (assuming they did not mistake trial version with full version that they claimed). Also, I am a little bit confused as the 1.5 hour of DVD playback is part of the 4 hour they get or a separate test -- if you play DVD for 1.5 hours and then use Z for word process for another 2.5 hrs, that's pretty impressive.

 

I think that they run separate tests for the dvd drain/productivity tests. I was thinking possibly if the battery care was enabled but I seriously doubt that battery care was enabled to cap the battery to 80% as that would make no sense.

I think that the Dell battery might be a 9 cell battery that was used but the Samsung uses a 6 cell battery 5200 mAh battery (the Z uses a 6 cell 5400mAh battery) and a CCFL display, 9200GS graphics card and is in some cases is up to £1,000 pounds cheaper. When you are paying a premium like that for the Z some people do want excellent battery life.

That Trusted review makes the Z seem a little less appealing but the extended battery will boost the battery life. Also all other reviews have pointed to the Z having excellent battery life so i am not sure exactly what to think but i still value what Trusted Reviews has to say on things though.

Turning of the dvd drive, modem etc seem to be going the extra step to get very good battery life and i don't do that when using Wifi.

 

Well, frankly, I don't mind having modem turned off ALL THE TIME as it is just not that common in the places I travel anymore. The optical drive power off is completely automatic and transparent -- it turns itself on when you press the eject button on the keyboard to insert a disc and it won't turn off if you have a disc in it -- so you don't have to do a thing. I think you won't have any trouble with it.

 

To turn your dvd of you can either do so in the device manager or you can do so through using the Sony Ultimate battery life setting or configuring your own settings. Not using the dvd drive is not the same thing as completely turning it of.

 

No, no, the power management in Z (and maybe in TT and SR, too, I'm not sure) does TURN OFF the power automatically, you don't need to do anything. When it's OFF, you hit eject, it will start power-up the DVD so it takes like 3 seconds before it actually ejects the tray out. You will have a little icon on the tray that shows whether your DVD has power or not currently.