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Sony Pledges More Accurate Laptop Battery Figures
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Sep 08, 2008 03:18 AM
from the trust-but-verify dept.
from the trust-but-verify dept.
Slatterz writes "Ever wondered why you never get the 10 hours of battery life advertised with your new ultraportable? Battery life ratings have been a joke for years, so it's interesting to hear that one big vendor is picking up its game. PC Authority says Sony is abandoning the usual (and wildly misleading) JEITA method for coming up with those 10+ hour battery numbers (they're still using JEITA, but not the usual way). Interestingly, the story has links showing the old and new steps Sony takes to come up with those battery predictions. It's good to see the industry coming clean on this issue."
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Submission: No more phoney laptop battery life figures? by Anonymous Coward
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How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I just don't see that faring well with Joe Average
Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
They'll leave the old 10 HOURS figure, in huge numbers on the packaging. Then have an asterisks, and a tiny footnote that says "TYPICAL BATTERY LIFE: 4 hours".
Parent
Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
TYPICAL BATTERY LIFE*: 4 hours
*before asploding
There we go, fixed that for you ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Somehow I just don't see that faring well with Joe Average ...
On the contrary, it's probably going over quite well since the likely reason for the change was customer complaints. Why, I alone have told them a MILLION times that people shouldn't exaggerate so much.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Joe Average is indeed in a market for lemons. But you find that very often, when buying something like a laptop, he might try and ask for advice from Average Slashdotter.
Most people know at least one geek. Most Slashdotters are probably their friends' and extended families' "go to guy", for tech issues. And lets not forget IT departments and professional buyers, etc. Every geek knows battery lives are 1-1.5 hours for laptops everywhere, and if th
Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
Just wondering here, how would a move like this affect marketing of computers? The previous model had an up to 10 hour battery life, the new ultra better omgwtfbbq more magnificent version has "Up to 4, but we're not lying to you this time!
The new figure is time to 0% power. The old figure was time to explosion.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's good to see the industry coming clean on this issue."
That should be:
"It's good to see a publication suggest that one player within an industry is slightly tweaking their method of measuring this issue."
Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
Or until a lot of people and magazines wonder why the hell they lie to us, since we can never reach the battery time stated on the box. Like now.
What are you talking about? My battery always lasts at lea
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Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:4, Insightful)
*In sleep mode.
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Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is close, but not quite accurate. Macs enter sleep mode as any other PC does. However, when they enter sleep, they also begin paging everything out so that they can hibernate if the battery gets too low while still sleeping. You can tell whether or not your mac hibernated easily. If it wakes up instantly on a key press it was sleeping. If it needs the power plugged in, and comes back to a greyscale filtered version of what you were working on and a progress bar, then it was hibernating.
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Re:How is this for marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
You can tell whether or not your mac hibernated easily. If it wakes up instantly on a key press it was sleeping. If it needs the power plugged in, and comes back to a greyscale filtered version of what you were working on and a progress bar, then it was hibernating.
What state was mine in? I pushed the button and it said "BRAAAAAIIIINS!!!"
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Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Informative)
Properly, we should be told the capacity of the battery and the consumption of the machine at highest and lowest levels.
For example, my Lenovo X61 gets between 4 and 8 hours on its large battery. The difference comes from how I tune the machine.
At least for laptops using Intel chipsets and Linux, powertop makes it very easy to measure battery life, and (more importantly) tune it. I get my 8 hours by by switching off the wifi, usb ports, killing programs that do too many interrupts, turning down the brightness, etc. Powertop shows exactly how many watts the machine is using. The battery has about 70 watt/hours so when I get it down to 9 watts, that gives me about 8 hours.
Re:Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Insightful)
You still have the same problem. Now you're simply moving the problem from calculating "battery life" to calculating "power consumption", and leaving consumers with an extra bit of math to do...
"Lowest" power consumption is tricky, because you've now got to define what parts of the machine have to be functional in this minimal state. ie. You'd get a huge boost in battery life if you shut off the LCD screen, backlight, and graphics chip.
Maximum isn't exactly easy, either... Does this include external devices drawing their power from the laptop ports? USB, Firewire, speakers, mouse, etc., it's pretty easy to drive the power consumption WAY up, with a few ridiculously power-hungry external devices.
Battery capacity is pretty trivial, and is already notated on nearly every battery I've ever seen.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
So, here's a very simple, useful standardized measurement:
1. Capacity of battery in mAh, when new, after 6 months, and after 12 months.
2. Power consumption of machine when doing video playback with screen set to 75% brightness, and all ports and networks enabled ("high").
3. Power consumption of machine when surfing the web, with screen at 50%, and wifi enabled ("medium").
4. Power consumption of machine when doing word processing with screen set to minimum brightness (not off!), and all ports and networks di
Re: (Score:2)
The devil is in the details.
You want WATTS, not just Amps, or else they can just halve the voltage and double the amps, with a trivial change to the battery pack.
Battery capacity over time varies SUBSTANTIALLY based on what level of charge is maintained over that period of time, and how many charge/discharge cycles it goes through. With certain types of batteries, how quick
Re:Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Informative)
"Lowest" power consumption is tricky, because you've now got to define what parts of the machine have to be functional in this minimal state. ie. You'd get a huge boost in battery life if you shut off the LCD screen, backlight, and graphics chip.
Sony's new "JEITA A"
http://www.sony-asia.com/support/faq/272659 [sony-asia.com]
1. No screensaver
2. VAIO Long Battery Life Wall Paper
3. Mute volume
4. Turn off wifi
5. Exit VAIO Smart Network
6. Turn off Windows automatic updates
7. Close Windows Sidebar
8. Start the system in the STAMINA mode [you can do it without restarting]
9. Close the Welcome Center
10. Close the Prepare your VAIO
11. Do NOT run the initial settings of McAfee Security Center
Power Plan
1. Set to Maximum Battery
2. Never sleep/hibernate/turn off display
3. Set graphics to 16 bit
4. Disable Memory Card Slot
5. Set Refresh Rate to 40Hz
6. Set LCD brightness to 28%
No offense but that's fucking ridiculous.
Nobody would ever realistically use their computer in that fashion.
Parent
Re:Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
it's a good general guide (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone should read that, it's good for most computers running Linux.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The Church of Scientology recommends that to save power on your laptop, you not watch any videos on YouTube that criticise them.
Re: (Score:2)
Nowadays you can shut down nearly every device via ACPI. It's what "disabling" them in the windows device manager does. (But of course in a windows-typical manner, you can't find out what actually happened [eg. if something was turned off])
Re:Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, whereas I can use my computer without WiFi and USB, etc. I do find it much harder to use it without the screen being on ;-)
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CPU on battery (Score:2)
it would be nice to have a portable computing cluster though. Ten quad cores in your pocket would be a nice performance boost.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you can easily use PowerTop [lesswatts.org] to optimize your powerusage by disabling/poweringdown Wifi, ethernet, sound and applications. So you can get your computer down from 14 Watt to 7 Watt, of course it all depends on what you need. You will see that what draws the most power is usually software not the hardware, if you run less it will draw less. It's not a price everyone is ready to pay, on the size of your computer and on functionality.
On my 12" laptop there is a 3W difference between a fully lit screen to a
Re:Battery capacity, not life (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're going to be pedantic, get it right. Batteries are measured in amp-hours, and if you want to use watts, it would be "watt-hours at X volts", whatever the voltage is that the battery is supplying.
The Lenovo X61 extended battery has 4400 mAh, or 4.4Ah, so if it lasts eight hours at a draw of 9 watts, then it's drawing about 16 volts.
9 watts at 16 volts is 0.55 amperes. 0.55 amperes for 8 hours is 4.4 amp-hours.
It's more fun not having to think this much on a Monday morning.
Parent
Next can we work on longevity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why DELL might actually be a good idea.. (Score:2)
I hate DELLs, but they do have cheap replacement batteries. So if your Dell makes it past battery replacement then it's going to be cheap to buy a new one.
Unofficial batteries are often half the price though, or you can refurbish by putting in new Cells in an old enclosure.
Re: (Score:2)
Battery testing methods (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA,
The old testing method: A picture showing a naked man stretching his anus to a large and disproportionate size. The Sony employee reaches into the anus and pulls out the battery figures.
The new method involves running the laptop until the battery is exhausted and timing the result.
Re: (Score:2)
New Sony Figures (Score:5, Funny)
Average time before battery goes flat under normal usage: 1 minute more than figures quoted by Dell
Average time before battery goes flat under Vista: 8 hours (i.e. during startup process)
Average time before battery goes flat watching DVD: length of film - 10 minutes
Average time before battery goes flat using Office: Fails during write process of important presentation
Average time before battery explodes into flame: 7 hours 32 minutes
Average time before stored spare battery goes flat: 5 seconds after it was last tested
Average time before battery goes flat under Linux:
Never. It is constantly recharged by sucking energy from the superior mind of the user
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They should put a big red LED counter on each battery, that way we might cut the red wire before it gets to 00:01
Re:New Sony Figures (Score:5, Funny)
Er, over here in the UK 'film' means 'movie'. Or 'flick' if you're a twat.
What do you call them? Cinematograms? Moving Pictures?
Parent
Prime 95 use (Score:2, Interesting)
I use a text processor... (Score:3, Interesting)
built in the 1980s.
It runs for approx 2 weeks continuously, on 4 AA rechargables, and I just dump my notes as a .txt file to my desktop.
If people made a more sophisticated version, with network capability and OpenOffice formatting, I'd buy it like a shot. Modern batteries would also run it for months.....
HD manufacturers next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HD manufacturers next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or alternatively we need RAM manufacturers to stop defining 'gigabyte' as '1,073,741,824 bytes'. If they must insist on using a power of 1,024, then they can pick a different word for it, that doesn't conflict with the usage of the 'giga' prefix to mean 'x10^9' in every other field in the world. May I suggest 'gibibyte'?
Parent
Gibibyte is dead. (Score:2)
Or alternatively we need RAM manufacturers to stop defining 'gigabyte' as '1,073,741,824 bytes'.
It's not RAM manufacturers, it's the whole computer industry... and for a good reason, that being that computers haven't used decimal arithmetic since COBOL was new and sexy.
Nobody uses 'GiB'. It was a fad, and it's a dead fad. And in any case it should be 'Gio'... the 8-bit-byte is actually LESS of a standard than the 2^30 octet Go.
Re:Gibibyte is dead. (Score:5, Informative)
It's clearly not the whole computer industry, though, is it? Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Some parts of the computer industry call a gigabyte 1,000,000,000 bytes, other parts call a gigabyte 1,073,741,824 bytes. One of these standards is consistent with the usage of 'giga' in all other scientific and technical fields, while the other is unique to computer science. To my mind, calling 1,024 bytes a 'kilobyte' was just about acceptable, since the difference wasn't so great and 'kilo' was a convenient shorthand. But calling 1,073,741,824 bytes a 'gigabyte' is really pushing it, and now we're starting to build terabyte drives and it's getting ridiculous. If you want to use substantially different multipliers from the standard, don't use SI prefixes for them. Make up your own unit names.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Drive manufacturers do that to make their product sound better than it really is, it's all marketing.
You may not like it, but kilo and giga have always had such values in computing because computers operate using binary, 10 binary bits gives 1024 possible values. It would be quite ridiculous to use 1000 and whatever nasty kludges were necessary to achieve that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not really. The difference goes up by 2.4% every iteration. It becomes relatively greater, not just absolutely greater. Terabyte disks are now available: a tebibyte is 10% more than a terabyte, and that's almost 100GB - quite a substantial difference.
But who's 'losing' bytes? I bought four gigabytes of RAM when I built my new PC,
Re:Gibibyte is dead. (Score:4, Informative)
Ya know, when I ask Linux "How much can this 1TB drive hold?" and it reports back "900 GB".
And when you copy files to it, you find that it only holds 760GB, because your files are small enough that the file system overhead eats more than 10% of the available space.
Gibibyte is dead because the difference between 2^30 octets and 10^9 octets is small. The computer industry uses Gigabyte for 2^30 octets because it works in powers of two, so the storage PART of the industry should do the same thing.
Parent
Re:HD manufacturers next? (Score:5, Informative)
Hard disc manufacturers are in the right though - mega means million, giga means billion, tera means trillion. It's the world of computers with their binary-derived values that are wrong.
This has already been discussed in great detail, and the decision was that a binary gigabyte (2^30 bytes instead of the decimal 10^9) should be called a gibibyte (GiB).
2^10 bytes (1024) is a Kibibyte (KiB)
2^20 bytes is a Mibibyte (MiB)
2^40 bytes is a Tibibyte (TiB)
There are even a few people who took notice of the decision and switched usage.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Now all we need is for HD manufacturers to stop defining "Gigabyte" as "1 billion bytes"
But Giga does mean 1 billion. Why on earth do some people in IT believe they can define a unit prefix differently to the rest of the scientific world?
It was an acceptably lazy hack back when the difference between 1024 (2^10) & 1000 was negligible, but now units of 2^30 are common, we're starting to the consequences of such laziness.
Its not going to be long before units of 2^100 are common. I don't know about you, bu
What's in it for Sony ?... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it very hard to imagine Sony doing anything altruistic at all. They are to Hardware what Microsoft is to Software.
So I'm wondering what's in it for them. Do they have some kind of new technology that when measured by the second method only, looks much better for them? Or perhaps their min-power usage number is the same as the movie-play version...
I'm only guessing, but I can't imagine Sony would be doing this just for the benefit of consumers, if they didn't get something out of it, since other manufacturers will still be using the old method of measuring this.
GrpA
no lying? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They will run the battery realistically but give the answer in crazy units - 5.7x10^-7 millennia. And in case you want to just check the capacity of the battery, that's 550 liter-atmospheres.
Repent for September 10th is nigh! (Score:5, Funny)
There would simply be no point in selling laptops with more than 2 days battery life anymore, in 2 days time we'll all be dead anyway (or sucked into a parrallel universe to experience a fate even worse than death!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider [wikipedia.org]
Sony? (Score:3, Funny)
So do their figures represent "how long the battery will last before it runs out of power" or "how long the battery will last before it catches fire" ?