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Dell 700m broken current sensor

post #1 of 11
3/24/05 at 12:55am
Thread Starter 
Has anyone noticed that the Dell 700m does not seem to have a Power Consumption (current) sensor? Or is my new 700m broken?

Bottom line:
None of the following changes the remaining battery time estimate:
-Changing the brightness
-Switching to external monitor (i.e. laptop screen off)
-Spin down of the HDD

Also, MobileMeter (http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/) registers a constant consumption of 13.02 watts, and so does BatteryMon.

All this seems to indicated either a broken current sensor or that the 700m does not include a sensor at all!

Can anyone tell me if this is the same for their 700m? Should I call Dell?

Thanks,
Edwin Chiu
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post #2 of 11
3/24/05 at 1:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by youngfiles
None of the following changes the remaining battery time estimate:
-Changing the brightness
-Switching to external monitor (i.e. laptop screen off)
-Spin down of the HDD
The battery remaining time is a windows funcion that basically depends on the rate at which the battery is draining which in turn depends on the things you mentioned. You have to give windows some time to give a proper approximation after you do the above.
More over, it might not even depend on the specific things you mentinoned (the actually battery life yes, but not the estimate). Does changing these things on a different laptop immediately ajusts the battery time remaining?
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post #3 of 11
3/24/05 at 1:21am
Thread Starter 

this works on other (non dell 700m) laptops

All the other laptops I have tried (at least 8 of them from fujitsu, sony, ibm, and hp) all have a response within 20 seconds in the battery estimate. The windows estimate should be based on the same ACPI current sensor reading that MobileMeter picks up on. If what MobileMeter reads is correct, windows will always be making the estimate based on 13.02w (this never changes for my 700m) of comsumption (which is rather low for a 12" notebook).

Thanks again!
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post #4 of 11
3/24/05 at 1:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by youngfiles
All the other laptops I have tried (at least 8 of them from fujitsu, sony, ibm, and hp) all have a response within 20 seconds in the battery estimate. The windows estimate should be based on the same ACPI current sensor reading that MobileMeter picks up on. If what MobileMeter reads is correct, windows will always be making the estimate based on 13.02w (this never changes for my 700m) of comsumption (which is rather low for a 12" notebook).
I stand corrected. I just tried in on my 600m. When I change brightness, switch to an external monitor, windows does show an increase/decrease in battery life remaining within only a few seconds.
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post #5 of 11
3/24/05 at 1:41am


You might want to see that you have the right chipset installed.
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post #6 of 11
3/24/05 at 5:03pm
Thread Starter 
I looked up all the drivers and they seem intact. I even tried loading all the newest ones straight from Intel.

Also, are there any 700m users out there that can tell me if theirs has this problem too?

Thanks!
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post #7 of 11
3/26/05 at 2:40am
I also see this behavior on my 700m. The time remaining display seems to be just a multiple of the percent battery left and is unaffected by what I'm doing.
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post #8 of 11
3/26/05 at 10:14am
If anything provides this feature it probably would be the BIOS (it seems the windows feature depends on this). You guys might want to wait up for a new release. The most recent version is A02 which I assume you're running - upgrade to it if not.

There is some talk about this issue in this thread:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=62726
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post #9 of 11
3/26/05 at 2:25pm
you MUST have A02 BIOS installed in order to fix the battery remaining life. It was not included in the original BIOS. Flash to A02 and you will get the time remaining on your battery.
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post #10 of 11
3/26/05 at 6:12pm
Thread Starter 
OK, I think I see what's happening. Dell included a fix in BIOS A02 to make windows display the remaining time. However, this fix is either sort of a hack or just isn't implemented correctly. Windows does not display a time remaining unless it receives a power consumption reading from the ACPI battery. It seems that dell just made the BIOS spoof a value so that this works. Either that or the software in the BIOS that makes that connection is bad. Either way, the time remaining just isn't accurate. (13.02w is way too low for a 12" notebook even with centrino). I've been contacting dell about this bios problem over and over again but I keep getting the run-around (they insist I do a complete system restore).

You other folks might want to contact them too and maybe someone will get through to the people who write the 700m BIOS

Thanks everyone for the help!
-Youngfiles
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post #11 of 11
3/26/05 at 6:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by youngfiles
OK, I think I see what's happening. Dell included a fix in BIOS A02 to make windows display the remaining time. However, this fix is either sort of a hack or just isn't implemented correctly. Windows does not display a time remaining unless it receives a power consumption reading from the ACPI battery. It seems that dell just made the BIOS spoof a value so that this works. Either that or the software in the BIOS that makes that connection is bad.
First of all I suggest you get a definite confirmation from other 700m owners that this is happening. I believe you but be sure.

Second, are you saying that the hardware (e.g., the battery) isn't made to support this?

I'm not familiar with how Dell releases their BIOSes - are the initial bios releases just barebones and their policy is keep adding features in the future versions, not just to fix bugs in the older ones? I would think they would include all the usual functions that the BIOS is capable of doing in the initial release.
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