Battery Life Orion (and others)

[McG]

The battery life on my Orion is a meagre 1.5 hours max. I've checked this out with Tech Support and they confirm this is the deal with the Orions.

Given that the advertising promotes the power saving benefits of the dual core intels etc I cannot understand why it is so low. I used it on battery last night to down load a piece of music and scan the web using wireless. I got 45 minutes out of it before I had the 'battery low' warning.

If I switch it on and just leave it I've had circa 1 hour 45 mins (incl hibernating every 20 mins). I've got the laptop power settings to minimal power and this hasn't improved things.

Fortunately I don't do much travelling at the moment but I would need to carry a spare battery if I can't improve the battery life somehow. My friend's Toshiba has run for nearly 3 hours using standard applications.

Is it because of the battery itself? If I purchased a better battery would this solve the problem. Any one have similar experiences?

I'm very happy with the laptop itself.

Thanks
Thanks

[Coops]

Do you mean you have the Power Scheme set to "Minimal Power Management" option??

[Coops]

Some of the windows power schemes turn on or off the power management features of the CPU and Chipset. Obviously by having these disabled your system would not be able to dynamically clock its power and speed in order to improve battery performance.
It maybe worth trying your test again with power scheme set to mobile laptop as i know this option supports full cpu and system power management function.

In the mean time i will see what else i can find out with regard to this.

[McG]

Great, thanks. I'll switch it today and see what happens.

[Coops]

Well lets us know what happens and also note your method of testing that way we can duplicate if needed here to test.

[McG]

Ok, run the test. Here's the 'log'

1. Charged battery to 100%. Left for 24 hours
2. 7.20pm - system ON using battery. Battery 98%. Select laptop/mobile powerscheme settings with defaults (5 mins). Opened excel and typed info. Left open and system running.
3. 7.30pm - system OFF. Document lost. (NB: I checked the system at 8.25pm and found it off. Realised it must have been the 5 minute default settings). System boots as per normal switch on.
4. 8.25pm - switched system ON. Battery 86%. Opened excel and typed info.
5. 8.30pm - system OFF. Switched on. Normal boot up. Doc closed etc. Changed laptop/mobile powerscheme default settings to 2 hours. Battery 76%.
6. 8.50pm - system OFF. Switched on. Normal boot up.
7. 9.10pm - Battery 39% (33 mins)
8. 9.45pm - Battery out. System hibernate and off.

I make this:

7.20-7.30 = 10 mins
8.25-8.30 = 5 mins
8.30-8.50 = 20 mins
8.50-9.45 = 55 mins
TOTAL 85 mins!

Today, I had the laptop in the office on ac power. No programmes running except desktop. System switched off after 45 mintus citing ''The system has recovered from a serious error' after booting up.

Both at home and at work I have the lapton on a solid surface to aid airflow.

Any suggestions

Thanks

[Coops]

Ok i am still speaking to some people about this problem. I am however interested in the off bit. Do you mean that the system was completely off. It should have been in standby not off. So that when you pressed the power button it would wake from standby and return to desktop and whatever you were working on. Thank you for this info.

Also if you changed the power scheme setting to 2hours. Was this for battery part of the scheme and also was this 2 hours before system standby? Obviously if it was according to your times it was not 2 hours before you found it off again which would suggest something is not right. Can you confirm exact settings and times please of your power scheme

[McG]

Hi there. Thanks for responding.

Powerscheme settings. I selected as thus:

Portable/Laptop. Battery. Default settings were

Turn off monitor: 5 mins
Turn off hard disks; 5 mins
System standby: 5 mins
System hibernates: 2 hours

After the second switch off I changed Portable/Laptop 'off' settings to:

monitor: 2 hours
hard disks:2 hours
standby: 2 hours
hibernates: 3 hours

I can confirm that the system actually switched off. When switched back on using the power button it took me to the normal start screen not to the document I had left open. This document was closed each time and all work was lost (when I didn't save).

Regards