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Lies, Damn Lies, and Battery-Life Statistics
theodp writes "What if automakers measured gas mileage by rolling their cars downhill with their engines idling? They might, Newsweek's Daniel Lyons suggests, if they took inspiration from the MobileMark 2007 notebook battery-life benchmark test, the creation of a consortium called BAPCo, whose members are — surprise — computer makers and other tech companies. Laptops score big numbers, Lyons explains, because they're tested with screens dimmed to 20%-30% of full brightness, Wi-Fi turned off, and the main processor chip running at 7.5% of capacity. Professional reviewers see company-generated battery-life claims as a joke. 'The rule of thumb is that in real-world use you get about 50 percent of rated battery life,' says a Gizmodo associate editor. Leading the call for reform is the not-necessarily-altruistic AMD, who gripes that MM07 was created in Intel's labs and rigged so Intel chips would outscore AMD chips, which draw more power when idle."
Captain Obvious?
They would need a really big hill.
Take a look at Anandtech's MBP review. The tagline 'Battery life to die for' sort of gives away the tale though.
Apple claim 5-8 hours. Anand got 4.92 (heavy downloading + XVid + Web browsing) to 8.13 hours (Wireless web browsing) with the screen at half-brightness ("completely useable") and no funny optimisations.
Maybe, just maybe, there's something to this "our batteries are better" thing they've got going; if someone comes out with a spare-battery-attached-to-a-magsafe-connector for those die-hards who absolutely *need* it, angels may sing in the treetops. Personally I've never needed to change the battery in my portable (whatever portable I've had) so it's no big deal to me. Yadda yadda, one datapoint not a trend...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Most people expect 2.5 hours of "good use" out of a laptop battery when new. This number hasn't really changed since 1998 or so. I can't remember the last time I used battery life when evaluating a laptop - if you NEED more than 2.5 hours of battery life, you just buy a second battery. People assume half the life stated as rule of thumb the same way I assume real world gas mileage as (EPA gas mileage * 0.8) for cars I drive.
The correct title for this article is "Does anyone still pay attention to marketing hype about batteries, or, how I learned to stop caring and ignore the marketing hype".
moox. for a new generation.
but I get five hours of battery life on a Macbook (last year's model), so I think Apple doesn't lie about its stats (because they don't have to?). Despite all the claims that Macs are overpriced, I think these are among the cheapest non-netbooks you can get with great battery life. IMO, laptops which last only 2.5 hours on a battery should not be sold.
People "expect" that just because they don't really realize it can be better. Put it another way: they don't expect that at all, they just accept it.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I wasn't very careful looking at the battery life, and, to my dismay, I took it home to find out it could only hold a charge for 1.5 hours. This is even on pretty conservative settings with the screen dimmed as low as possible. Now that it's starting to age, I'm down to about 1 hour of battery, which doesn't even last through my 75 minute classes.
Most people expect 2.5 hours of "good use" out of a laptop battery when new. This number hasn't really changed since 1998 or so. I can't remember the last time I used battery life when evaluating a laptop - if you NEED more than 2.5 hours of battery life, you just buy a second battery.
Oh, how I wish that were the case.
Hasn't changed? The hell it hasn't. My new Dell Studio 15, with the standard battery (6-cell, I think), gets three hours and forty-five minutes under regular usage (i.e., not playing Dwarf Fortress or doing something graphically intensive). It'd get more with Aero Glass off.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I have a cheap lenovo from last year and if I am on 50% brightness with wifi on and just browsing web with some videos I can go 3 hours. The battery is rated for 3. *shrug*
https://www.speakservers.com/
2.5 hours? Really? What's the point? My two and a half year old Thinkpad T60 gets 5 hours on a bad day. My friend with a similarly spec'd Thinkpad (a bit older) claims to have gotten 9 hours with wifi off and more like 7 hours in reasonable usage (his is tweaked a bit better). Both of us have just the extended battery (there is also space for a second, smaller battery instead of an optical drive).
Instead of complaining that the test is rigged, maybe creating processors that draw less power when idle would be a good idea?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I get seven to eight hours of normal use on a 14" T61 with the nine cell primary and the ultrabay battery, using an Intel SSD. I really CAN run my system all day off batteries, if I need to, but given the number of cells I'm using, that's something I really expect to be able to do.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I will never buy a laptop with a non-removable battery even if it gets 8 hours playing MMOs at full resolution. I *have* a Macbook Pro, and if it had an "iBattery" my laptop would have been destroyed when the battery failed and swelled... instead of having the battery pop safely out of its compartment.
Better battery, great, but I'll take a laptop that's a millimeter thicker if that's what it takes to put a door on the battery compartment.
Hey AMD, I have a challenge for you. Instead of bitching about Intel rigging their battery life testing mechanisms, why not design your chips to beat Intel at those very same tests?
Also, frankly, I don't want a CPU that uses a noticeable amount more electricity than others when it's IDLING. So at this point, just for this reason, I'm glad my computer has an Intel chip in it. But if you can beat those tests of Intel's that you say are "unfair", and you win the battery life tests that you say are rigged against you, then you definitely have a one-up on Intel in that rite.
If someone comes out with a spare-battery-attached-to-a-magsafe-connector for those die-hards who absolutely *need* it, angels may sing in the treetops
This is exactly why I don't understand the fuss over non-removable batteries. You get better battery life, and if you need extra power you've always been able to buy external battery packs. They have cable that attach to the Magsafe connector. You can get them in a range of sizes, including sizes that are not much larger than a spare battery would have been anyway...
Similarly there are tons of external packs for smaller devices like the iPhone/iPod (or anything usb charged).
I also have not often found the need for an second battery in a laptop if I can get at least three to four hours out of it. Basically the only time is an international flight, and for that the external batteries are perfect. Heck, until it broke the Solio solar powered recharger I had could even recharge itself in-flight as long as I was at a window!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2.5 hours? Maybe the norm for non-Apple notebooks, but decidedly below par for a good laptop. Then again, I have a MacBook that gets 4.5 hours, and that is with the keyboard illumination turned on. Apple notebooks may be pricey, but you get quality and long battery life from them.
OSX pwns.
I will never buy a laptop with a non-removable battery even if it gets 8 hours playing MMOs at full resolution. I *have* a Macbook Pro, and if it had an "iBattery" my laptop would have been destroyed when the battery failed and swelled.
But perhaps the battery would not have swelled had it been designed into the computer instead of being an Apple re-branded battery manufactured by someone else.
Perhaps Apple's move to all sealed batteries is because they got tired of the weakest link in the chain being overly cheap manufacturing processes from other companies bringing their own equipment down...
If for some reason the Apple laptop battery did swell and cause the system to fail, I'm not sure what the issue would be - you'd get a new laptop.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We saw the same issue with clock cycles. People misinterpreted, and the marketing drones were more than happy to let them do so, clocking as measure of work. A faster processor did not mean that more work would get done, but the consumer did not know that, so they would pay more for fantasy benefits.
In terms of fuel consumption, and battery life, the reality is more of the horsepower that the gigahertz. As long as one is running comparable tests, then one can assume that a car rated at 20 mpg will run longer than a car rated at 10 mpg, just like a computer that is rated for 4 hours will run longer than a computer rated at 2 hours. The problem, like the horse, is related the terms horse, hour, and mpg to actual physical quantities. We know that the physical performance is actual 20% or so less in real life.
As mentioned elsewhere, what messes life up is companies like Apple that advertise 3 hours of battery life, and, under normal use, actually get it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
20 hours of rugged computing on the go. (Ok...rugged text entry.....) I want a netbook that captures the spirit of the Model 100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100_line
People are still using them (much less, unfortunately) today. I'd say there is a market for a long lasting computing device that is rugged.
zosxavius photography
In my own experience, I've found there are 3 different battery life numbers you run into with any laptops. These numbers are always significantly different.
1. The life the manufacturer tells you that you'll get /. readers) swear you'll actually get
2. The life every reviewer (and some
3. The life you actually do get
Regardless of 1 or 2, I've found that 2.5 hrs is a good ballpark for 3 when the laptop is new. (ok, for Apple, the newest one I've used is a bit over 2 years old, but was in that ballpark when new. My newer HP w/o the add-on battery is a little better than that, but same ballpark)
I suppose it depends on what you consider to be "good use". I personally get at least 4.5 hours of use out of my Toshiba A305 while coding and web browsing. Good thing, too, since I'm often not able to find a free power outlet while I'm at school.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Battery tech has improved, but the computer manufacturers use that extra ability to run more stuff. It's just like how computers don't seem to work any faster than they did ten years ago--advances in memory and processor power get eaten up by bloated software and additional "features". And 4-5 hours seems to be what most people consider acceptable; few are willing to trade off power, screen size/brightness, features, etc. for longer built-in battery life.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I would surmise that this has to do with the fact that Thinkpads seemed to be geared more towards the businessman - there would be hell and a half to pay if your laptop couldn't last for a flight on a plane. Their customers needed long battery life and they got it.
A lot of my friends who have laptops rarely actually have them untethered - they can take them around conveniently, but they always plug it into whatever open socket happens to be nearby.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
"People expect 2.5 hours", speak for yourself. I expect at least 7-10 hours of battery time from a laptop, I usually don't need a laptop, but when I do I'm away from a usable outlet for quite some time. Having an additional battery is of course possible, but those can easily weigh in at 1 kg+, I got enough to log around as it is.
Exactly! I bought a new battery for my old powerbook about 4 years after I got it and the replacement batter had so much more juice that I actually got 2x the battery life out of it that the original battery gave me (when brand new).
The problem isn't that batteries aren't improving, but that battery improvements aren't keeping pace with hardware requirements. The recent shift toward performance/watt and Apple's larger, but not exteranlly accessable battery seem to be aimed at addressing this imbalance.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The number one selling feature for new laptops seems to be weight (and slimness). If "consumers" would be willing to carry the same weight they did some years ago, sure, you could have batteries that would last a long time, even with more modern processors and so on. but they don't, lightweight sells, and people believe the marketing crap about battery life, so there ya go.
An extra pound or two of battery would do wonders, but they can't hide that extra pound or two in the specs, while they can fudge about battery longevity.
Batteries have gotten better, from sealed lead acid to NiMH to LiIon in laptops, but still, if they keep reducing size and weight, your amp hours of storage will never get much better. You can maybe maintain parity, but it won't get better.
I think there would be a market for it, but obviously no laptop manufacturer wants to take a chance on that, they all seem to be on the lighter is always better schtick.(same with cellphones, lighter and teeny tinier) Personally, I think laptops got "light enough to not suck" several years ago, but obviously most people just don't want to carry anything heavy anymore like they did even five years ago. Example, you can get pretty decent notebooks now at around 3 lbs. Add 2 lbs of extra battery, still at five pounds, what was considered really lightweight not that long ago. You'd have pretty good all day long battery then..but would they sell?
What OS are you running? Even though I am primarily a Windows guy (Quite happy with XP x64) I've found that the ultra small Linux distros can squeeze more life out of a battery. I would try DSL, DSL-N, or Puppy, going from least juice to most.
I have had customers bring in laptops in the same predicament and after telling them how much a new battery would cost (and hoping they don't have a coronary) I show them DSL and Puppy and tell them that running one of these instead of Windows could extend their battery life. Depending on the model some have doubled the amount of time they get and they are all quite happy. After all, it is a laptop. you are using it to take notes and read emails, not run Bioshock.
So give them a try. There are plenty of Puplets you can choose from if you need something customized, but for best battery life I would try DSL and DSL-N first. IIRC DSL-N has Abiword included which is fine for note taking in class. Both DSL and Puppy have easy to use instructions for putting them on a USB stick if you are talking about a Netbook or for whatever reason can't use a CD. All it will take is a couple of hours of your time, a few blank CDs and a few hundred MB of bandwidth to give it a go. And if you are down to an hour of time left on a full charge, what have you got to lose?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Just a guess, but since they typically dont run an antivirus app in the background, both cpu and disk can idle more.
Not trying to be a macista, but I can only note that I still get around 4h wifi surfing at medium brightness out of my two year old macbook, so apple definitely do give reasonably honest battery estimates.
Why bother installing just to check it out? I'm sure that you have an old spare flash lying around, yes? Both DSL and Puppy have flash installers. Just boot off the CD, run the flash installer, answer a couple of questions, and there you go. The nice thing about running off the flash is if you have more than 128Mb of RAM you can simply have the entire OS loaded into RAM with the TORAM option flag. That way you don't even need that battery sucking HDD unless you need the extra space.
I had a customer whose GF managed to drop his laptop and break the HDD cage. It wasn't cheap to replace that, let me tell you. I told him about running DSL on a flash and he tried it. He liked it so much he went and got a PCMCIA flash adapter so the flash card wouldn't stick out and now just runs DSL-N on it. it gets better battery life than before with XP according to him, and by having the entire OS loaded into RAM it is very fast to respond. So why not give it a whirl on flash? I have ran DSL on 256Mb, but I would recommend 512Mb or 1Gb so you have plenty of space for programs and files. The entire install of DSL with Abiword was something like 96Mb which left plenty on my 512Mb for my files.
All it takes is a couple of hours to play with it and an old flash drive. If it turns out it works well for you then you can swing by Newegg or surpluscomputers.com and pick up a cheap flash adapter for your laptop and an 8Gb card and can unplug your HDD and save even more juice. That way even if you pick up another laptop or Netbook you will have a nice SSD based secondary for a backup.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
WRONG.
No matter whether closed-loop or open-loop, modern FI always injects the amount of gas most closely matching the volume of air taken in.
Closed-loop (using the oxygen sensor in the exhaust) is totally adaptive, if there's unused O2, add more fuel. Open-loop (no O2 sensor, or 02 sensor not hot enough or not working or...) thet FI computer consults a table based on all the usual factors: Mass-air flow, engine temp, throttle position.
In either case, the opinion that your FI turns off the flow of fuel when you let off the gas is wrong. While the FI can indeed cut the fuel, it does so only under extremely rare conditions. I've actually never been able to make it happen on my car.
Oh, and the reasons? When you shut the fuel off, you run the risk of a lean mixture, which is both damaging to the engine (burning holes thu pistons) and super hi rush of NOx. That's why your throttle plate doesn't snap fully to the idle position, that slight loiter is to allow the system to "balance out" before returning to idle.
Damn, wasted my mod points to write this.
Truth in advertising laws were designed to protect gullible babyboomers who did not grow up with advertising from a young age. Consumers these days are so jaded by marketing and advertising they just ignore it for the most part, or at least do research on the products they buy before plunking down $100+.
moox. for a new generation.