Z: Controling power scheme - 2 versions??

In my Sony Z (Z890 series) loaded with BD, 500gb/7200rpm, 6Gb, I'm getting 10 hours battery life with the extended battery if I set it to 50% brightness and turn off wifi and set to lowest power consumption.

My problem is that to change my power scheme, I have to do two things:

1. My S2 button is configured to change the power scheme and it toggles between: SILENT mode, BALANCED mode and PERFORMANCE mode.

2. However, right clicking the battery icon on the taskbar brings up the box to 'SELECT POWER PLAN' where the choices are 'BALANCED', 'POWER SAVER', 'HIGH PERFORMANCE' and 'INTERVIDEO WinDVD'.

Changing 1 doesn't affect 2. And vice versa. So to change my power setting, I end up doing TWICE the work by having to change BOTH settings manually.

I'm a bit confused. I'd like to have the S2 botton simply change a global power consumption rather than having to change two settings.

Any suggestions and explanations as to what is happening?

Thanks,
UL

 

Ok.

First off, the S2 shortcut you have (like me!) is a hard-BIOS control which pretty much tells BIOS to either keep the fan always running (PERFORMANCE), run when the temperature of 81'C is reached (BALANCED), or downclock CPU to keep it cool and quiet (SILENT).

Now, the power settings on the TASKBAR are OS based power settings. Things like POWER SAVER while on your battery will disable aero effects, thus less demanding on power thus more power saved. Or 16bit colour switch from 32bit; again, less power-hungry thus better on battery life.

Basically, your situation is normal.
I personally set my fan settings to SILENT and use POWER SAVER (which I slightly tweaked here and there), and I can get 6 hours 30 minutes doing WORD with the standard battery. This is with BRIGHTNESS at 2 bars.

My strange issue is with VOLUME control. You have to put your ears right next to them to hear a quiet hiss despite volume level being zero bars, but they go away when MUTED (FN+F2). That gave me 10 extra minutes.

...Could I ask whether you could hear the hiss? I'm taking in my Z to service after my DVD drive mucked up, so would probably sort out the speaker issues (if it is indeed an issue for me only...)

Thanks, and hope my info helps.

 

actually, from what i remember reading, battery saver actually underclocks the cpu and ram

so if you want to use a custom power plan with the underclocking, you'd have to select the "battery saver" scheme first, and then customize it

and the speaker hiss is on mine too, it's normal because the soundcard is not the best, and it can pick up vibrations/electricity from nearby components.. you could get an external soundcard to get rid of the hiss

the reason the mute stops the hiss is because it turns the sound producing component off, i'm guessing it's the amp

cheers!

 

Thanks. The explanation is fantastic. Exactly what I needed.

So I guess I do need both power scheme controls then. I'm tickled pink to have 10 hours so I can live with that.

Confirmed: Yes, i have hiss at zero volume also and yes, mute cuts it off. So you have double confirmation that it is normal.

Thanks again!
UL

 

The sound card in the Z is remarkably good[*] for built-in sound. But the amp is not, neither for speakers nor headphones.

[*]: Use a sound player with WSAPI, set it to 24-bit 44.1 kHz, and play using HDMI, and you'll have absolutely excellent sound.

 

oh btw, i did a bit of research on head-fi.org (the sound experts) and if you want to have an expresscard soundcard that just juts out a tiny bit (provides outputs) but is "ultraportable", then the best is the echo indigo djx... a bit expensive though, the indigo iox has mic input, but a narrower dynamic range

if you want even better sound though, you'd have to get an external dac/amp (it's portable, but not.. ultraportable)

 

My guess is that the new Z and even the TT may have better amp. At least our TT sounds better. The internals of the headphone jack is also built very diffferently from the traditional laptop jack. Not sure why.

 

The noise cancelling. There are two extra rings on the plug.

As for the TT, that was a top grade product where few expenses were spared. It also had a true 8-bit display. But for the new Z versus the old Z, I'm not too sure whether there are any improvements, and not just featuritis.