vaio battery life

I recently purchased a Vaio VGN-SR390 with the "9 hour" battery. I understand you never get that. But what I think is odd, is that no matter what settings I change, including WiFi on/off, it *always* says 3:55 to 4:00remaining with 100% charge. (I haven't actually timed it on the clock, though.) Questions:
1) Is this what other SR owners are getting? about 4 hours...no matter what
2) How do I make sure bluetooth is off (haven't been able to figure that one out)
3) Should I see the battery life increase with reduced display brightness, Wifi off, etc?

 

There has been an issue with this with the wrong battery life prediction / estimated battery life.
I've not heard anything about this for a while though.
Try running your battery down to check what your battery life is really like.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295886

 

You are getting 4 hours on 9 cell battery?
I use 6 cell battery and It show 3.5 hours remaining when it is fully charge.
And yes, I can stay around 3+ hours with battery fully charge and running my laptop for browsing and listen music. I can use my laptop for 2+ hour when I am using it to play DVD movie.

But its all depend on what you are doing with your laptop.
If it show 4 hours and you use your laptop to play a game, I bet you can only use it for 3 hours or less.

 

If previous suggestions fail, try re-install the driver with the battery fully charged.

 

probably means some of your battery's cells are dead.. i'm guessing 3 of them

just like what happened with my dell's extended battery, it should have lasted for 4:30 hours, but lasted for 1:30, dell customer support would not let me return it after i told them that there was something wrong with the battery because they said that "it's normal" and that "battery times decrease with usage".. i was so mad, the battery was only used a few times, it was practically new

even after i told them that i have the exact same laptop and 2 other extended batteries.. 1 of which has been used for well over 1.5 years and still retained a 4:30 hour charge.. they still denied the return

 

but when you change settings, such as Wifi and screen brightness, shouldn't I see the estimated remaining time change? BTW, it's a 9-hour battery, not sure about how many cells.

 

I posted a link in my first post about the wrong estimated battery life time on the SR.
However, judging by your other post about the HDMI you have the SR3 with dedicated graphics.

3 hours with the 6 cell with wifi on and other power saver settings in place is normal for this laptop with the dedicated graphics card.

For this model you will be lucky if you can get 5 hours with wifi on with the 9 cell battery. If you own the 9 cell battery dependent on what brightness and power profile setting you're using 4 hours seems quite normal.

 

Use the laptop on battery, use a clock too.
Don't do anythign "heavy" - so do things like web browsing, word editing.

If you find your time is significantly shot of what you expect, then downaload a battery monitor of some sort, also if its share/trialware - this'll tell you the capacity/wear on the battery.

Here is one - Shareware - that would do the job:
http://www.passmark.com/products/batmon.htm

If you suspect there is something amiss, go to your nearest Sony Service Centre and ask either for a comparison or a refund.


Brawn - I hope you filed a complaint.
Batteries though technically affected by wear and tear are covered by a shorter warranty - so unless you used that battery for some time (6 months +) they would have to replace it.
I am assuming here it arrived with the problem when new.
If its not too long ago - just threaten to file a - how is it called - small claims suit against Dell - then they should start heling