How Much Battery Life Does Sleep Mode Really Drain?
The primary test involved two different computers
. One is my trusty dell Inspiron E1705, running Windows 7. The
dell Inspiron E1705 battery I was testing, however, is an extended life, nine-cell battery I ordered almost exactly one year ago (from LaptopBatteryExpress), that I've only used when there's no power cord to be had, keeping my nearly-dead stock battery in at all other times. The other is the
dell Inspiron 6000 battery inside the brand new dell Inspiron 6000.
I put both the dell and the MacBook through one, two, four, and eight-hour sleep cycles, and measured the dell after shutting down and starting up after eight hours. The MacBook eight-hour shutdown measurement will be added in later today; it's missing due to a really dumb measurement-keeping error.
Here's how much charge the dell and MacBook lost over the course of eight hours of sleeping, and how the dell fared with a shutdown and startup.
I was surprised at the MacBook's greater use of power than the dell after the first hour, but also surprised at how both laptops drew on power so consistently. From this chart alone, you might think that shutdown is still the safest choice when it comes to saving on battery power. But let's put those mAh loss figures in perspective.
Here's the same
laptop battery drain figures, but measured against a Y axis that uses the maximum charge of the MacBook Pro battery, about 6900 mAh, as perspective:
(no pics)
If you've got to get back to work later in a day, and you've got a decent enough
dell Inspiron 9300 battery, sleeping seems to make some sense.
But those are fairly new and well-kept batteries. How about laptops that have seen some real use? Erica Ho offered to measure up her Sony Vaio and Dell Inspiron laptops after one-hour sleeps and shutdown/startup cycles (her laptops can't really live for four hours on sleep).
We triple-checked Erica's figures and organization, but you're looking at the results: shutting down and starting up her old Vaio actually uses more power than letting it quietly sleep. We've certainly seen our share of older hardware that seems to require enough time for tea water to boil before it's ready to go. It's surprising to see that sleep mode, when it works, can make a lot more sense on those systems.
Jason also offered up his Eee PC netbook for a 24-hour sleep test. He didn't have shutdown figures for each marking, but he did learn that his netbook draws power on a very consistent basis, and might be best used sleeping during the day, then charging at night. As he put it, "A whole day of standby is only one-sixth of the battery. Even if I had a bigger and more power-hungry laptop, though, I'd still use standby and just be extra-sure to plug it in at the end of the day."
As stated at the beginning, each computer user's habits are different, and each computer user has different scenarios to work inside. Still, from testing a few modern and not-so-modern laptops, we've come to see sleep as a pretty smart option, if you know you won't be leaving your system alone for more than a day.
by: theo
Choosing A Computer Debt Settlement Programs – How To Know If A Debt Settlement Is Right For You Hard Disk Performance Tool - You Must Try This ! Debt Negotiation Vs. Credit Counseling Programs – A Debt Relief Comparison Maxtor Hard Disk Diagnostics - Read Now! Hard Disk Troubleshooting - Quick Fix ! Harddisk Troubleshooting - Stop These Errors ! Localized Minneapolis Printing Services versus a Nationwide Printing Service Step outside your local Boundaries before Considering a Dallas Printing Service Choose a Printing Company in Atlanta Printing Carbonless Forms as a Time Saving Solution Proven Mortgage Loan Modification Programs Credit Card Debt Relief – Do Debt Relief Programs Really Work?