HP Gives a Lesson in Batteries, Explains the 32-hour Laptop

[Marcus Yam]

Ever wanted to know how batteries work? You should. They power your laptop and all your mobile devices.

HP Gives a Lesson in Batteries, Explains the 32-hour Laptop : Read more

 

[danwat1234]

So 32 hours for a 100 watt hour battery, means the laptop is using an average of 3 watts of power out of the battery. No way unless screen brightness is at lowest and your just staring at a Word document and only moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard a few times a minute. The RAM is going to take a few watts (unless downclocked when idle?), the SSD about 500mW, the CPU and chipset will be a few watts and the screen will be a few watts even if LED.

Even on the link in the article to the website, it says the 9 cell will last 13 hours 45 minutes, but that might not be with the specs they say is needed to make it last 32hrs

My Atom netbook with a ~55 watt hour battery only lasts about 5 hours, and from the wall with a kill-a-watt it takes about 13 watts all the time. This is an Atom netbook with an older less efficient chipset though. Power consumption doesn't go up noticeably if CPU is idle vs CPU @100% load. A watt or two at most.

EDIT: I think I read it wrong, a 100wh internal battery + a 100wh super duper ultra 100wh external battery yields up to 32.x hours of life.
OK, so 6 watts power draw from the batteries on average. Still, very hard to believe unless your doing absolutely nothing on the machine and screen brightness is way down.

Wouldn't the screen itself take about that much power if it's at full brightness? My CCFL 15.x" laptop screen takes about 10 watts from the wall (on vs full brightness). LED is supposed to be 40% more efficient or something like that.

 

[gti88]

If you read carefully, it says "Up to 32 hours requires HP 9-cell (100 WHr) Li-Ion primary battery, separately purchased HP BB09 Ultra Extended Life Notebook Battery"

 

[bennaye]

^ This is why I never trust the manufacturer's claim on battery life. It's almost always bs and an exaggeration.

 

[AznCracker]

If I attach the power cord to my laptop, can I say that it has infinite battery life? That battery pack is huge and expensive. Who would want it?

 

[memadmax]

Funny how this article came up right when I had a battery fail on my laptop.
I'm in the process of tearing it apart and upgrading it from a 6 cell to a 9 cell as well =D

 

[Uberragen21]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]So 32 hours for a 100 watt hour battery, means the laptop is using an average of 3 watts of power out of the battery. No way unless screen brightness is at lowest and your just staring at a Word document and only moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard a few times a minute. The RAM is going to take a few watts (unless downclocked when idle?), the SSD about 500mW, the CPU and chipset will be a few watts and the screen will be a few watts even if LED.Even on the link in the article to the website, it says the 9 cell will last 13 hours 45 minutes, but that might not be with the specs they say is needed to make it last 32hrsMy Atom netbook with a ~55 watt hour battery only lasts about 5 hours, and from the wall with a kill-a-watt it takes about 13 watts all the time. This is an Atom netbook with an older less efficient chipset though. Power consumption doesn't go up noticeably if CPU is idle vs CPU @100% load. A watt or two at most.[/citation]
It has two batteries. The primary being the 100 WHr, the extended is unspecified (though I haven't watched the video, but it may say in there).

"32 hours requires HP 9-cell (100 WHr) Li-Ion primary battery, separately purchased HP BB09 Ultra Extended Life Notebook Battery"

However, the extended battery appears to be a 9-cell configuration as well, so assuming it's 100 WHr, it would still require 6 watts per hour (100 + 100 = 200 WHr / 32.5 Hr = 6.15 W. But that's speculation on my part.

 

[Pawessum16]

I love how the article mentions the guy in charge of engineering the batteries........from the pictures, the guy is a moron because he's about as efficient at using space as the average battery modder is (I would even say worse!). They probably put about $75 worth of mass produced lithium cells in there and made bank selling it for $200! Plus it's such an inefficient use of space, and why probably every manufacturer that uses custom battery packs (Apple...) is snickering with laughter about the atrocity of the design, and that they could fit 48 hours of battery life in the same space......but they don't.....because it's horribly bulky.
Those pictures make me want to cry! HP clearly doesn't understand battery life. I wouldn't mind more battery life, but not if it meant that bulky piece of expensive, inefficient, crap!

Correction: $150 for the pack, and probably about $50 in raw batteries.
2nd Comment: Then again, after listening to the guy in the video for a little while, he gets my respect, but I simply think the design is a poor company decision.

 

[richboyliang]

So basically 30 hours if you set screen brightness, cpu usage, etc to minimum and might as well idle the entire time, otherwise it's more like 5 hours. with the least power hungry cpu and other hardware available.

i'm going to treat this promised battery life with as many grains as salt as i do printer's ppm ratings.

 

[Marcus Yam]

Two important things to note:

1. That extended battery pack thing is that big because it has to fit a variety of different HP models, all with similarly-spaced apart mounting points. Could the design have been much smaller? Of course, but I have a feeling that a smaller, custom design lost to the compatibility argument.

2. U.S. regulation caps battery capacity by class, so anything beyond what HP (or other manufacturers) put in a single package (100 Whr) would have to be classified as something potentially more hazardous. HP simply couldn't fill all that empty space with more cells, even though that would be awesome.

 

[belardo]

Its already heavy enough as is. Whatever... Lenovo has been selling extended life battery packs for a long longtime.

I'd want to see 10+ hours of ACTUAL usage on a 14" notebook with an i5-class CPU... with a 3cell battery.

 

[Hypertraxx]

Nice try HP,
Ill be impressed when stays on for 100 or more hours.

 

[theuniquegamer]

Good improvement in battery life . If a normal elitebook can give a 32hrs then i expect the gaming laptops (the premium ones like alienware and origin pc ) would be at least 4-6hrs backup in future

 

[danwat1234]

Why there is so much wasted space is because I guess the chemistry isn't Lithium Polymer, I think the polymer type has the ability for nonstandard shaped cells so Apple uses that Tech in their products so they can fill every crevice with battery.

 

[mcvf]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]So 32 hours for a 100 watt hour battery, means the laptop is using an average of 3 watts of power out of the battery. No way unless screen brightness is at lowest and your just staring at a Word document and only moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard a few times a minute. The RAM is going to take a few watts (unless downclocked when idle?), the SSD about 500mW, the CPU and chipset will be a few watts and the screen will be a few watts even if LED.Even on the link in the article to the website, it says the 9 cell will last 13 hours 45 minutes, but that might not be with the specs they say is needed to make it last 32hrsMy Atom netbook with a ~55 watt hour battery only lasts about 5 hours, and from the wall with a kill-a-watt it takes about 13 watts all the time. This is an Atom netbook with an older less efficient chipset though. Power consumption doesn't go up noticeably if CPU is idle vs CPU @100% load. A watt or two at most.EDIT: I think I read it wrong, a 100wh internal battery + a 100wh super duper ultra 100wh external battery yields up to 32.x hours of life.OK, so 6 watts power draw from the batteries on average. Still, very hard to believe unless your doing absolutely nothing on the machine and screen brightness is way down.Wouldn't the screen itself take about that much power if it's at full brightness? My CCFL 15.x" laptop screen takes about 10 watts from the wall (on vs full brightness). LED is supposed to be 40% more efficient or something like that.[/citation]

I think their numbers are correct. I have M11x R1 and I have it normally at 8.5W when browsing that is not light browsing. By playing with it, slightly reducing brightness and fancy diods, I managed to be at 7.5 W. My battery life was when totally new at 8.5 hours. Now this is first generation of this computer with hungry CPU, standard HDD and old chipset. With new CPU, SSD and chipset 6W is totally understandable, I believe they could do 5 W if they want. So their numbers match.

 

[danwat1234]

[citation][nom]mcvf[/nom]I think their numbers are correct. I have M11x R1 and I have it normally at 8.5W when browsing that is not light browsing. By playing with it, slightly reducing brightness and fancy diods, I managed to be at 7.5 W. My battery life was when totally new at 8.5 hours. Now this is first generation of this computer with hungry CPU, standard HDD and old chipset. With new CPU, SSD and chipset 6W is totally understandable, I believe they could do 5 W if they want. So their numbers match.[/citation]
But the M11x uses low voltage CPUs, Sandy Bridge is 17w TDP, the HP laptop uses 35w TDP CPUs.
But I get what your saying.

 

[tsnor]

lol,

and there at the bottom of the page .... "HP Recalls More Laptop Batteries"

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lithium-ion-li-ion-battery-recall-laptop,10470.html

 

[Guest]

At least you can update the graphics drivers at the Intel website for HP! You'll see icebergs floating through hell before you would get updated Toshiba Customizied graphics for Intel HD graohics! Folks, Toshiba wants to sell you the hardware, but only enough software to get their computers out of the door!
Toshiba computers do not play nice with Wings3D, beacuse of the inability of updating the OpenGL drivers.
If you need updated graphics drivers for Toshiba computers with Intel HD graphics, you need to buy a new computer, If you need to update OpenGL!

 

[freggo]

How about 'hot swappable' batteries?
That way we could simply carry a spare or two and definitely make it thru even a long day of work (or play).

 

[jamie_1318]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]Why there is so much wasted space is because I guess the chemistry isn't Lithium Polymer, I think the polymer type has the ability for nonstandard shaped cells so Apple uses that Tech in their products so they can fill every crevice with battery.[/citation]

Lithium polymer is special because it's a powder. In a regular battery it's filled with acid, so they have to be pre-manufactured in a metal casing. Lithium polymer has some interesting drawbacks though. If I remember correctly it was more sensitive to degradation than lithium ion batteries. If you want the differences wikipedia will give you a nice list.

 

[DRosencraft]

How about 'hot swappable' batteries?
That way we could simply carry a spare or two and definitely make it thru even a long day of work (or play).

That would essentially require an additional battery of relatively high power (more than a CMOS batterty then) to be placed inside the computer to act like your laptop battery. You can't just cut the power and expect it to keep working. So, in other words, your idea is inefficient at least.

As for the battery-life claim, I don't think it is partiularly ridiculous. Yes, it's highly impractical, but so are a lot of the overclocking goals and records you see here on Tom's every now and then. A performance goal is a performance goal; we just usually place more emphasis on the absolute performance rather than energy savings. I would remind that this is a business laptop. In other words, this is a laptop directed to people who will likely be sitting at applications like Word and Excel all day, not so much streaming hours and hours of music or video, or playing games (or shouldn't really for the sake of productivity). Again, is it impractical? Sure! But I think it's a valid claim, because even if you don't exactly replicate the claims, chances are you can fall somewhere relatively close.

 

[__-_-_-__]

o'really sherlock? if I connect my notebook to my external battery I get 40hours. what a big deal...

 

[tbhall77]

[citation][nom]DRosencraft[/nom]That would essentially require an additional battery of relatively high power (more than a CMOS batterty then) to be placed inside the computer to act like your laptop battery. You can't just cut the power and expect it to keep working. So, in other words, your idea is inefficient at least.As for the battery-life claim, I don't think it is partiularly ridiculous. Yes, it's highly impractical, but so are a lot of the overclocking goals and records you see here on Tom's every now and then. A performance goal is a performance goal; we just usually place more emphasis on the absolute performance rather than energy savings. I would remind that this is a business laptop. In other words, this is a laptop directed to people who will likely be sitting at applications like Word and Excel all day, not so much streaming hours and hours of music or video, or playing games (or shouldn't really for the sake of productivity). Again, is it impractical? Sure! But I think it's a valid claim, because even if you don't exactly replicate the claims, chances are you can fall somewhere relatively close.[/citation]

If the laptop is designed for a second battery then it wouldnt be an issue. Back in the '90s dell sold a laptop (I believe it was the Dell Inspiron 8000) that had 2 bays in it. One that would hold the battery and the other could be a floppy, cdrom, or the second battery. If we had a battery pack that could fit in the slim dvd slot that would work. Another way is to have a battery pack of some size that can plug into the AC plug in the laptop. Making the laptop think it was AC power while you swap the real battery. The laptop would obviously need to support the ability to remove the battery on AC power while not disrupting power going to the rest of the components.

 

[livebriand]

Realistically, how does ti compare to, say, the Thinkpad x220's extended battery?

 

[jblack]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]But the M11x uses low voltage CPUs, Sandy Bridge is 17w TDP, the HP laptop uses 35w TDP CPUs.But I get what your saying.[/citation]


TDP is max power from what I understand..... Not idle power.