Thinking of picking up a
VAIO CW over the weekend? You might want to hold those horses just a bit, at least until
Sony (or someone) figures out what exactly is causing the batteries on these to zap themselves while asleep. Based on a raft of complaints -- nine pages strong and growing -- over at
Notebook Review, it sounds as if the batteries within the outfit's new CW series (at least those with Core i3 CPUs and the 330M GPU) are fading inexplicably quick while resting, leaving many with next to no juice once they crack open the lid the next morning. All sorts of theories are flying, but one in particular seems to note that a bundled Sony battery management application could be causing cells to only charge to a certain percent even when the machine is "off." For now, some folks are actually flipping the battery out for a fraction of a second and popping it back in after putting it to sleep for the night in order to prevent the drain, but we get the feeling that a less janky fix should be in order.
Right, Sony?
posted March 25th 2010 9:33PM
If you disable Sony's battery health software, does it still happen?
@Nitesh
yes, it absolutely does. It happens on all models, and it's been doing so for years
@Rossgadget
Not really. My Vaio NW has never done that
@mnhthebest
if you peruse through the forums over at notebookreview, you'll find that most every model over the past few years has suffered from this problem.
However, as is the case with most things, there are certainly exceptions to the rule (such as yourself)
i lul'd especially with trolls on macrumors screaming vaio>macs
@chippytrip
lul? is that the new thing? i've been missing out..
@chippytrip
Typewriters pwn both.
@chippytrip I went from a vaio to a MacBook pro and I can honestly say that the vaio was all in all pretty good. BUT what I didn't like was windows. People should bashing on PCs and really bash on what's wrong with them (software).
@chippytrip
ughh, you mean Apple has never ever had quality issues?
LOL ENJOYING YOUR YELLOW SCREEN, AREN'T YA?
At least there is access to the battery
I have the same problem with my older CR 120 Vaio. It started after I upgraded to Win7. It was a fresh install, but I installed all the Sony Win7 drivers and utilities after I upgraded. Its a pain, I have to shut down when not plugged in.
And this along with my previous experiences with Apple products are proof why you should never buy the first revision of ANYTHING.
@Dafrety Amen!
has always been like that with my Sony Vaios.. This is not NEW to me...
My TZ drops battery life when turned off completey... only removing the battery works.
Not sure why, but read alot about it a few years back, just seems to be a Sony issue. My TZ is rated to 8hours Battery Life, I wold get about 6hr 30mins with video.. no wifi... But if I fully charged it and left it OFF over night, I'd have 40% battery in the morning.
@futile32 doesn't happen to my Vaio Z
@futile32
I have a Vaio TZ and a Vaio NW and both use about 0.5% battery charge per hour they are sleeping.
That is, put it to sleep for 8 hours (while you sleep), wake up the next morning and it has gone from 100% to 96% (and sometimes 98%).
I have fresh installed Windows 7 on both though which may have removed the Sony application that is causing your issue. I don't have any 'battery care' function.
@Luxury Guy But I also don't use the Battery Care Function. I sometimes leave the house without a charger and don't see the benefit in only charging my battery to 90% or 80% just so that the battery gets a few extra end of life cycles... I'd rather have the extra juice now, and if my battery starts to lose its capacity, I'll just replace it.
@xsacha
The sleep function DOES NOT stop battery drain. I slows it down but doesn't stop it. Turn off the laptop or your hibernate to further reduce battery drain. In sleep mode, the battery is used to keep things in memory. RAM needs power to store information.
Try shutting it down or using hibernation...duh
@xanavi
Hit the source link. Even when they do fully shut down the computer, there is still battery drain.
No info on this particular CW issue, but I must say that Sony's Battery Care function is downright BRILLIANT. My almost 2 year old Vio FW can still maintain about 2 hours of battery life with the screen on full. It's had near full dischanges almost every other day.
I have no idea what other high end Notebooks do not have this feature *cough*MBP*cough*.
@Prairiedog has a good point, my TZ still holds what its always held, despite constant discharging (issue/feature)
@Prairiedog
Couldn't agree more. I depleted 3 Thinkpad batteries from the IBM days within 1.5 year of each battery (they were less than half capacity in about 11 months) and my last Vaio is 1.5 years old and the battery still rocks same as day 1
the whole issue here that you should not have to do that... Duh.
@finnyz that was supposed to be @xanavi... having some issues with android app
@finnyz
You shouldn't have to go in to a state that doesn't use energy...if you want to conserve power. Makes PERFECT sense! /sarcasm
So your telling me this thing is like a fat kid when it eats and sleeps at the same time?
I have a sony vaio from october 2009 and my battery drains like crazy when it's in hibernation mode. It drains about 30-40% after 12 hours of being in hibernation when it should definitely be 3-4%. Sleep mode works alright though, but I have it go to hibernate mode after 2 hours.
@Omen What's the difference between sleep and hibernate? I don't see a hibernate option on my desktop (not sony but I recently order 1 vaio laptop)
@tome0124
Let me start by saying Google is your friend.
In general, "sleep" is a low power mode, where as "hibernate" is where you computer uses no more or less power than when it's "shut down".
IIRC, when your computer "sleeps" everything is still in RAM. RAM is volatile memory, meaning when it loses power, all the information stored in it is lost. Therefore, your computer needs to keep using power to keep your RAM from dumping. This uses power.
Hibernate on the other hand dumps the RAM onto the hard disk, and the computer shuts off completely. When you restart your computer, your computer "sees" that you've hibernated it, and loads that information back into RAM, and you should be back where you were when you sent the computer into hibernate.
tl;dr sleep uses power, hibernate doesn't (shouldn't)
@tome0124
sleep is a very low power mode. hibernate saves the ram contents and powers off the computer, and is a bit slower. if you don't see the option, you have to enable it, or hold down the shift key if it is already enabled
@tome0124
Here's a link to explaining the difference between stand-by and hibernate.
http://www.timeatlas.com/term_to_learn/general/understanding_differences_between_hibernate_and_stand_by
@Omen
My laptop uses absolutely no power in hibernation. I put it in hibernation for a week when I went on a holiday and came back and turned it on. I looked at the battery, it was 99% (presumably lost 1% from the hibernate/resume process).
Sleep uses a power because the device is actually still turned on. For me, 24 hours will use up about 10% of the battery in sleep mode.
If you are getting drastically worse results, it has some defect and you should exercise your warranty.
@xsacha
I honestly think you have an abnormally good performing computer. The longest I've ever had a computer sleep for was 10 or so hours. And that's with integrated graphics and a Pentium T2310. My C2D computer lasted about 7, and my other computer was about 8.
They were all different brands of laptops, and all ran windows 7 at some point in their lifetime (when I made the observations they were in Win7).
I ordered it couple days ago and it's shipped right before this article show up lol
Sony laptops are famous for this issue. It isn't just the CW. My FW does it. It may lose 40% if left in standby overnight. Installing Windows 7 seemed to improve it some. Fortunately for me, I normally work on battery during the day and charge at night, so I rarely run into a problem.
@David Wagner
If I'm understanding the issue correctly, what you're experiencing is normal laptop behavior. Standby does use power. What the CW is experiencing (again, if I'm understanding correctly) is when you shut down or hibernate, the computer is still drawing power.
If you can shut down or hibernate and still have power draw, then you have a problem.
@David Wagner
My SR and SZ do this too.
@BigJayDogg3
yeah, my FW definitely does this. Just got it in January.
If I hibernate it and leave it for a few days, it usually has around 10% charge left. Obviously, this shouldn't be happening. At the very least, maybe the Engadget publicity (albeit late, according to the dates from the NotebookReview forums) will force Sony to fix this crap.
I have a Vaio F and haven't noticed this-- but I turned off the battery saver function. Sony's software is awfully rough. In the same application pictured, if you click "special buttons" and then Document Zoom you get an awesome piece of Engrish.
"Some softwares are able to use Zoom Button, if you check out. In addition, depending on the software, the Document Zoom could not be normal to work."
I have no idea what that means or where the Zoom Button is.
I thought about buying one of these a few weeks ago but decided not to because of reports about this on NotebookReview. I'm surprised to see it hit Engadget.
The term is jankity.
Is this something new with laptops? My XP laptops don't do it, but my Vista and Win7 laptops drain the battery while they are hibernating.
@Jason B
No idea, hibernate and shut down both use the same amount of power for my Windows 7 laptops: 0%.
There may be a bug in your versions that don't complete the hibernate properly or something because hibernate is the same as shutting down the machine. No power is used after it saves everything to disk.
See, I literally JUST bought the Vaio CW with the i5 and Nvidia 330m...about five minutes ago. Before this though I use to have a Vaio FW that did this until I installed seven in it, and left the battery app behind. The first install of windows seven was the home premium free upgrade and I just tried the companion disc that auto-installed all the apps, even though I had the battery function turned off it still would drain over night. My Clean install of Ultimate that I did later fixed that, although now when I turn it on cold boot occasionally it gets all funky and takes a really long time to load the explorer.
I was referring to using those options until a fix as I have never heard of a windows program starting the computer.
I have a Sony FW51 which i brought in November 2009 and i have tried everything i could find on the intrernet to stop the battery drain even when shut down but to no avail - when i spoke to Sony support they said this happens to all laptops which is true 6 months or more but not in a week. I have removed battery care, switched off the sleep when closing laptop lid, used Powercfg to check that nothing is waking the machine but nothing works the battery still drains and if i put it to sleep it will be dead in 2 days. My 4 year old macbook lasts for a month or so on sleep and still has enough juice to boot up and my work Fujitsu laptop which runs XP will sleep for 7 days and still boot up.
I wish Sony would do something about this as something is draining the battery and i don't think it's a software issue, as stated before lots of people are having these issues but Sony seems to keep pushing the line that it's normal. I like the design and quality but the battery issue has put me off buying another one in the future.
Mine came with Windows 7 but i don't think that's causing the issue.
my Z46gd upgraded with 8GB DDR3 does it, my old S and FE series all did it... its terrible.. but then again you cant have everything in this world.
Sony can suck a deep fried one.
i just let my core i3 310m cw sleep for 8 hours from a full charge it went to %92...