S380 battery life

380 is a bad model...battery last about 2.5 hours. My 270 with the regular battery makes 5.5 with normal use of office software and wireless

S360 with the standarb batt gives me 4 hours of wifi surfing / downloading etc, and between 5 to 6 hours with min backlight and wifi off. Gaming gives me about 3 hours - all on the standard batt.

Artag

Battery life on a S470/480 will be similar to the S380. Internally they are roughly the same if not exactly minus a consumer wanting a slightly different configuration... ie bigger HD and what not.

I don't have one but thats my speculation. It may be a little more time before someone hs a 470/480 as Sony has just recently released those.

I have an S380 with an extended battery. Using it for 2 months now. Using no power management, cpu at 2.13 ghz wifi on, lcd max brightness, and bluetooth on, I get just under 3 hours watching a movie, typing, and some web browsing. This is a reasonable amount of time for me.
So far the machine has been pretty reliable. The fan is quiter although still noticeable than the 270 series, it tends to run at a constant RPM. What I think is bad about this machine are the following: 1. heat. This computer runs very hot, playing far cry and running mobile meter in the background I recorded temps well over 80C. No artifacts or failures, but just lots of heat. I called sony tech support to ask about this because if this laptop was sitting in my lap I would get a burn either on my leg or some nearby appendage (lol). The tech rep in a very pre-coached statement said we classisfy this device as a notebook not a laptop!!!!!!!! Its interesting the exact same places I feel very hot spots on the s380 are also showing up in the asus w3v. I agree with some recent comments on the w3v sites, basically why should we have to undervolt these machines just to keep the fan quiet and the palmrest cooler to touch. If the notebook was titanium or aluminum think how much hotter these spots (right palm rest and bottom back right corner) would be. Shame on any notebook maker for releasing a product that makes the user uncomfortable to use for more than 20 minutes at a time. Most including me wont return the product as they feel a sense of commitment to the product they just shelled out big $ for. ($3450) for me.

2. I do not like the s380 keyboard. Its mushy and lacks any sort of tactile feedback. Also its depth on the lap top is a bit awkward, their is a lot of blank real estate on the notebook before you get to the keyboard.

Graphics are not as bad as everyone is complaining about. Before its becomes pure dogma read my benchmarks and take a look at the specs showing up now for the x300 and x600 -based machines. I hope this helps.


Hox

Mmm- with a *standard* battery, CPU at 1.8, max brightness and wifi on, I get about four hours on a 360.

Artag

Hi Guys I just took a business trip with my S380p and here are the values. My flight was from San Francisco to Philadelphia. In air time =5:40 minutes so a good test for notebook use. Before leaving I loaded the rightmark undervolting utility and set the min to 0.7v and the max to 1.2v. I used the lappy on the plane for a good 2 hours working and saving constantly on a power point file that was nearly 200mb. Wifi was off, bluetooth was on. Screen at max, and rightmark was managing processor usage.

First no Fan noise. Second when I finished I had 1:35 left!. I use the extended battery. So in actual use I was acheiving roughly 3:35 with the battery. On the return trip I turned wifi and bluetooth off and watched an entire movie 2h 29 min and when I turned the machine off I had nearly 2 hours of battery left. Machine was very cool to touch, no hot air blowing out.

The other modification I did prior to leaving on this trip was open the machine up and put some artic silver ceramique on the cpu. It was very easy to get inside the machine, I just used a precision screwdriver set and followed a posting about the hard drive upgrade at talkvaio.com. There are a few variations from the s270 they showed, but nothing really major just a few screws that are not present any more or slightly in a different spot.

Once inside the s380p, I noticed that the cooling fan was a toshiba product and it looked well made. Interestingly, when I removed the heat pipe from my processor, I noticed that the builder of my notebook at sony had not been very careful applying the heat pipe to the processor, the thermal tape was not even in contact with the processor and had actually ended up on the side of the processor. So no thermal compound was effectively in use on the notebook. I popped the processor out and cleaned it and the underside of the heat pipe with 100% ethanol and then reseated and applied the artic silver. The ceramique (what I had on hand) takes a while to burn in so I let the notebook run super pi and then the sony screen saver for nearly 12 hours. I will post new temps once I know them today, but I know now at leat that one of the reasons this machine runs hot is that poor thermal conductance was occuring b/w the heat pipe and the cpu.

Now about battery life, it looks like real use with an extended will net you between 3.5 and 4 hours, with the rightmark undervolt, careful usage of the wifi card, and approprately placed thermal compound.


Hox

My S270 with extended battery provides 7 to 8 hours of wifi surfing at medium brightness. Using RMClock or CHC to undervolt to 0.7v (600MHz) brings it closer to the 8 hour mark.

Sony S270P | 2.0GHz P-M + AS5 | 1GBx1 | ATI9700 64MB | 7K100 100GB 7200RPM | WIFI | BT | 7hr.extended.batt | CPU undervolt | 4.2 lbs

You just eliminated that asus notebook and sony's notebook. Now, what am I going to buy now...

BTW..thanks for the helpful info..all of you