Battery life survey

[wynand32]

I love this computer. But I decided to switch from mac. Imagine the frustration with the battery life. Hope all is well with yours that will give me some hope. Keep us inform please.

So, got the second replacement in. Screen is very nice, maybe even better than my original. I did a test of the battery today, basically opened Chrome and my RSS reader, which are the two apps I most often have running, and let it sit there on battery until it shut off. This one ran for 8 hours, my original ran for less than 5 hours using the same test. So, that's an improvement.

Unfortunately, now this one has a very high-pitched whine when the fan kicks in. It's most noticeable at the lowest fan RPMs, and it's right at a pitch that drives me batty. I work at night quite a bit when my wife is sleeping, and so the room is very quiet. I'll have to decide if I can live with the sound, because although it might sound insignificant, it's actually incredibly annoying.

 

[Philtastic]

Damn, man, this sounds like quite an extended ordeal. The SP4 is one of the few tech devices that I've both heard and experienced first hand and had others that I personally know have hardware issues. Then you have to add all of the software issues that, fortunately, have been mostly taken care of, but it took almost half a year for it to get to this point. It's really pathetic from such a large company like Microsoft.

 

[wynand32]

Damn, man, this sounds like quite an extended ordeal. The SP4 is one of the few tech devices that I've both heard and experienced first hand and had others that I personally know have hardware issues. Then you have to add all of the software issues that, fortunately, have been mostly taken care of, but it took almost half a year for it to get to this point. It's really pathetic from such a large company like Microsoft.

Yes, it's kind of ridiculous. It might be my own fault--the reason I'm going through this ordeal is because some other SP4 users report 7 hours or more of actual on-screen time on battery doing actual work. I can't seem to get more than about 4.5 hours of actual use. I'm suspecting, though, that those reports of 7+ hours are exaggerated and the real useful battery life is closer to mine.

I've now tried three SP4s and all demonstrated the same battery performance. I ran the latest one alongside mine using Peacekeeper web battery test in Chrome and the old machine ran for 3 hours and the new one for about 3:40. That's not terribly great in either case.

I think I'll keep this new unit if the fan sound is something I can get used to, just because the battery is newer. I'll just have to live with the 4-5 hours max useful life I'm getting until I can afford to buy something else with better battery life. I think this is a great machine in many ways, but it's not living up to expectations in a few important areas.