Battery life ratings: Time for a do-over

ThraxThrax 🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
edited February 2010 in Science & Tech
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Comments

  • BuddyJBuddyJ Dept. of Propaganda OKC Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    I love the suggested icon. It may not be perfect but it certainly is better than what we have now.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Great article Thrax. I'd love to see the industry adopt a system like that. Sadly I doubt they will unless some serious pressure is applied to them (in the form of lost sales for marketing inaccuracies). Maybe someone should set up a database in which people can post real battery life as determined by metrics like this. That was people can more accurately call manufacturers on their BS.

    EDIT: batteryrating.com is available :-D
  • wthwwwthww Terre Haute, Indiana
    edited September 2009
    I wish there was such a system also. Lenovo claims nine hours of battery life for my ThinkPad X200 w/ the largest capacity battery available. running in powersave mode with BT & wifi on and active and brightness at fifty percent. I get closer to six hours. If I shut them off, about seven with the brightness at minimum. Only when completely idle and in powersave mode does it estimate nine hours or above. I'm quite happy with the machine anyways, considering its speed/battery life/weight ration is excellent.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Robert,

    Grade A stuff. Consumer apathy has a role to play in all of this. I'm pleased to say that Icrontic is a tech consumer community that has taken a very public stance against this kind of blatant misinformation guided by the corporations we serve. They owe us better, and when enough people demand it, it will happen.
  • ButtersButters CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Yeah Lenovo battery ratings are horrible. You have a compact laptop, I have an older generation T61P 15.4. Battery life is basically useless. Though, I'm not gaming, I'm lucky if I get an hour working on moderately cpu-intensive business apps with a 9-cell brand new. I rarely use it off its dock since its mostly used for work. MFG est 5.9 hours / 2 = 2.95 as far as I'm concerned is still a bit of a stretch.
  • jj Sterling Heights, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    as I was told with my cell phone, charge your laptop more often and shut up.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    I can't wait until our laptops run on fuel cells and their energy usage will be rated in BTUs.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    j wrote:
    as I was told with my cell phone, charge your laptop more often and shut up.

    Hmm... cell phone runs for the entire day without charging... laptop runs for 2 hours if you're lucky. Somehow I don't see the correlation. Furthermore, you were BAWWWing about one specific cell phone (ignoring the fact that ALL smart phones need to be charged daily at least) NOT about battery life ratings in general. You, sir, are a dining room table and your argument is invalid.
  • jj Sterling Heights, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Ok well from a person who has to give a spec on battery life for my products I can say it's very difficult to place a single life of operation. You have to have a baseline and a standard to to test the baseline. Just because the baseline doesn't meet a few peoples opinion of how it should be tested doesn't make is wrong or inaccurate. But I'm all for challenging the status quo. So, it will be interesting for sure

    A word to the testing going forward. Make sure the testers us "NEW" batteries. If they're a year old tests results are invalid. The lithium in the Li-ion battery starts to degrade as soon as the battery is assembled. This is why they only last 2 to 3 years. Also, every charge further degrade the Lithium the battery.

    Future batteries (such as the ones in the Volt) Use a nano-phosphate Li-ion. Much better life span and higher current capacity. I would expect the next 5 years will show a revolution in battery technologies.

    Does any one know what power there computer draws. I can say on my desk top I got a Max of 125 watts even when playing TF2. I've been monitoring my PC for a month. What do laptops draw? I'd be interested in that.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    All I know is my cheap off-brand 65W adapter for my laptop gets hot enough that I worry about it starting fires. I'm thinking the laptop is pulling close to what it can offer.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Computer manufacturers could always take a page from the aerospace industry:
    All of the aircraft and spacecraft designs I've had the chance to work on or get told about have electrical systems that are designed around these things called "load profiles." Basically, for each phase of operation and figure out which systems are running for that flight phase and total up the power draw. You get things like Engine Start: XXXX Watts; Cruise: YYYY Watts, Landing Approach: ZZZZ Watts. These numbers are useful for the designer because they determine minimum load capacities and duty cycles etc.

    If I'm buying a laptop, I think it would be neat to know:
    * The Watt-Hour rating of the battery.
    * The battery capacity degradation rate per year.
    * The power draw for various common usage scenarios: boot up, draconian low-power mode, radios on idling, radios on web browsing (20% CPU random disk accesses,) backing up hard disk (heavy disk access,) etc.
    With this information only a little simple math is required to figure out what kind of battery life you could get with YOUR usage patterns. It's not too complicated: if you're smart enough to care then you're smart enough to operate a 4-function calculator.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    j wrote:
    Does any one know what power there computer draws. I can say on my desk top I got a Max of 125 watts even when playing TF2. I've been monitoring my PC for a month. What do laptops draw? I'd be interested in that.
    My 4-year-old IBM ThinkPad T42P draws 16-17W while on battery (minimum frequency scaling, mid-level backlight, BT and 802.11 radios set to min power), 25 W while on A/C in On-Demand, idling, and 35W at full tilt boogie.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • UPSLynxUPSLynx :KAPPA: Redwood City, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Great piece Thrax.

    Consumer BS is so well entrenched, I doubt we'll see a truthful solution to this any time soon. Think of spec sheets for HD televisions. Contrast ratios are constantly smugged (dynamic contrast, anyone? Bullcrap.) as well as response rates.

    Spec is smudged so often, it's criminal.
    drasnor wrote:
    * The battery capacity degradation rate per year.

    This would be great to know as well, since batteries cost a frigging fortune once they crap out.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Hmm... according to powertop (yay Linux) my laptop pulls between 17 and 21W when running on battery. I could probably tweak some more laptop-mode settings and get that down some more. I really wish MSI would release a larger battery for the EX630, the ONLY thing I have a problem with on this lappy is my battery life :(
  • edited September 2009
    I just bought an HDTV with a 2,000,000:1 (2 milion) contrast ratio.
    If it even gets to 1:1000 on average I'd be shocked...
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Daniel,

    I know what you mean, deception in terms of actual contrast ratio ratings is another common practice. Audio amplification is another place where electronics manufactures like to occasionally play a trick on everyone by varying the way they measure a watt vs. a more stringent and realistic FCC suggested guideline. In the buisness I'm in we rely on an independent verification process to validate our capacity claims. One has to wonder why this is not required for more products?

    It all starts with an educated and motivated consumer.
  • SoulEvolutionSoulEvolution Toronto
    edited September 2009
    i cant wait for the heat-powered laptop
    wouldnt that be great? starts up by battery, purposely overheats due to tight componentry, ad uses that heat to power the battery! i think im on to something! has this been thought of before? 0_0
  • UPSLynxUPSLynx :KAPPA: Redwood City, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    i think im on to something! has this been thought of before? 0_0

    Only if you can keep the overheat from destroying the hardware.... or your house ;)

    The Chevy Volt. What a load of crap. 'You don't drive for more than 40 miles a day, right? The Volt can go FOREVER!!!1'

    Because the electricity it takes to charge it for those 40 miles is completely free.
  • edited September 2009
    Excellent article!!!

    I think 3D gaming can be excluded from the battery life measurement with a footnote that it is required to have the laptop plugged in. My graphics card (8600M-GT) does not even switch to highest frequency on battery anyway.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    UPSLynx wrote:
    Only if you can keep the overheat from destroying the hardware.... or your house ;)

    The Chevy Volt. What a load of crap. 'You don't drive for more than 40 miles a day, right? The Volt can go FOREVER!!!1'

    Because the electricity it takes to charge it for those 40 miles is completely free.

    INFINITE MPG!!!!!111omg
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    UPSLynx wrote:
    Because the electricity it takes to charge it for those 40 miles is completely free.

    Yeah! I mean, it costs about $0.80! Those assholes.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    j wrote:
    A word to the testing going forward. Make sure the testers us "NEW" batteries. If they're a year old tests results are invalid. The lithium in the Li-ion battery starts to degrade as soon as the battery is assembled. This is why they only last 2 to 3 years. Also, every charge further degrade the Lithium the battery.

    As it happens, that's an excellent argument to NOT use brand new batteries when testing. Using a new battery to run the expected power life profile for the laptop is just as idealized a scenario as is running the tests with all wireless radios disabled, screen at 10% brightness, and an idle processor.

    Run it with a 4- to 12-month old battery and give people what they can really expect over the early useful life of the laptop, not what they might get if they're lucky right out of the box.

    What a goofy suggestion.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    That means used batteries for different laptops would have to be used in the same specific lab conditions over that 4-12 month period in order to make the numbers comparable. Furthermore, since we're talking about the battery life of a laptop (and not just the battery), it would make sense to test the battery while it's actually in the laptop in question. For 4-12 months. Before it's on sale.

    No, I think it's much more practical to test new batteries to get comparable results, and inform users how to take care of their batteries to minimize wear out. I don't feel like that information is being advocated enough by manufacturers right now, because they'd rather sell you a replacement battery than make your current one last.
  • jj Sterling Heights, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Dras, 35 watts at full capacity. This interesting to me I thought it would be much higher. But I guess this makes sense since I think a laptop battery is 60 to 65maH. So that's 2 hours of use on max tits.

    Is there a power monitoring program I can install?
  • jj Sterling Heights, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Snark, you can't be wrong enough. The reason you use new batteries is so you know what the capacity is to begin with.

    I see your point, but if you start from an unknown capacity it's very hard to come to a reasonable conclusion. Perhaps after a few months the test should be run on the same batteries to see the degregation, but to do that you would have to log how many time you charged the battery.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Just because a battery isn't brand new doesn't mean you can't possibly know its capacity.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Great article, Rob! I know that I was super disappointed in the life of my laptop a few years ago- Dell told me that it would last for three hours, and I was lucky if I got an hour and a half. (It was also one of those batteries that might explode and set you on fire!). For a student, knowing your battery life is really important, because especially as finals time ticks down, you're going to want to study in places like libraries where there might not be tons of access to outlets. Listen up, battery companies!
  • jj Sterling Heights, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    Snarkasm wrote:
    Just because a battery isn't brand new doesn't mean you can't possibly know its capacity.

    Your wrong. Every time a battery is charged it losses capacity. Battery Manufactures have a graph on this very thing and that's why they place a charge cycle count on it. Also, in the case of Li-ion Batteries if they are left on the self there capacity degrades, not by much but enough to screw up a test. The battery manufacture also has data on this.

    If the intent is to change industry labeling, then you had better had accurate test data. They will ask the very same things I've been talking about.

    I think Drasnor is right, Try to get them to place different hours of operation for different loads. This might be an easier sell. Then at least marketing is happy because they can play there game and put "9 hours" in big font on the advertising, but on the back it shows a performance curve based on common real world loading situations.
  • NorgeNorge Sidney, Ohio
    edited September 2009
    j wrote:
    I think Drasnor is right, Try to get them to place different hours of operation for different loads. This might be an easier sell. Then at least marketing is happy because they can play there game and put "9 hours" in big font on the advertising, but on the back it shows a performance curve based on common real world loading situations.
    I think the point of this article was to avoid that type of marketing BS. The goal is to get rid of the "9 hours" in big letters on the front and replace it with something meaningful.

    I think the testing method the article chose seems like a pretty reasonable way to do things. Get new batteries of the same age, get a standard testing software, and present the results to customers in an easy to read format. Sounds like a good idea.

    Norge
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2009
    The power management tools that ship on IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads have a panel called "Battery Information". On that panel is the date of battery manufacture, FRU part number, serial number, design capacity, current capacity, wear level % (100 * current capacity / design capacity), and cell manufacturer.

    There was an unmaintained Windows XP tool called MobileMon that gave the same information for any ACPI-compliant battery, but these days I use Ubuntu and it's on the power manager battery information page.

    -drasnor :fold:
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