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Battery life
Curious about what kind of battery life others are getting. I'm a bit disappointed with mine, as I can't seem to get near the 8+ hours that were advertised.
I'm running a clean install of Ubuntu 15.04 with Cinnamon. I haven't installed anything from dell yet, except for the BIOS upgrade, and everything else seems to be working perfectly. Any tips for extending the battery life would be appreciated, thanks.
MRC01
80 Posts
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June 12th, 2015 13:00
I am getting about 8 hours when using the built-in screen, 10 when using external monitor. Not as good as Dell advertises, but better than I've seen on any laptop. My Macbook Air got 6-7 hours under similar conditions.
It may help to specify this kernel boot param in GRUB:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pcie_aspm=force"
Also you can try using TLP or similar Linux power management tools.
MrTSolar
36 Posts
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October 29th, 2015 13:00
Sorry for reviving an older thread, but I installed TLP this morning, and it has made quite a difference. Before, I was getting roughly 8 hours per charge (i5, 1080 non-touch). Since installing TLP, my runtime estimates have jumped from 7-9 hours to 8-16 hours. I have been using my system on battery for 3.5 hours (same usage pattern as before) and still have 70% charge remaining, giving me a boost to a solid 11 hours estimated runtime. Nothing fancy, installed it and started it (sudo tlp start).
I have my machine set to do nothing when I close the lid, so it doesn't sleep or lock the computer. Since there is very little draw with the screen off, I hardly notice charge drop while on with the screen off vs. sleep. This saves me about 5 seconds each time I open the computer, as well as a lot of glitches from the sleep/wake cycle. I keep my screen brightness 5 ticks up from the bottom (is anyone else's lowest setting no backlight?)
I think Dell's advertised runtimes include the Power Companion, though the Windows 10 XPS 13 I tested in Staples was giving me 13 hour estimates with a webpage and internet radio open, screen about half brightness. It was also an i5 with the 1080 non-touch display.
MrTSolar
36 Posts
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October 30th, 2015 13:00
OK, so starting at 90% charge, I've been running on battery for 7 hours, 32 minutes and have 36% charge left. Total runtime is estimated to be 12 hours, allowing for a few percent charge reserve left.
I have Firefox open with 13 tabs, a Windows VM for about 20 minutes total, WiFi on the entire time, and brightness 5 steps up from the lowest setting.
TLP definitely made a difference over stock Ubuntu 15.04. Before, my battery would've been flat already.