Hello, I noticed the battery/power tray icon indicates constant
charging even though the batterie is at 100%. It does so for
hours / all the time. On the other hand, it seems to me like this
is not reality, since charging of battery is also indicated through
blinking of the organge LED at the front of the notebook. This
LED does not blink, it only blinks when battery is below 100%.
I find still find it strange. Do you have the same situation?

Hi, I have the same problem. Just got the VGN-X505VP (UK version). According to perfmon, it charges to 19730mWh when icon shows 100%, but the charge rate at that time is still around 8W (max charge rate is ~12W; ~1050mA * battery voltage. About 1-2Wh more are charged into the battery. Charging stops when charge rate reaches about 2W. Orange LED is no longer blinking, but tray icon still indicates charging. Perfmon still indicates charge rate of just 37mW (this would mean a charge current of 3mA @ 12.6V, which is very little for a 2000mAh battery)
Examine your battery closely; has it been opened?
Run perfmon.exe, select Performance object: BatteryStatus -> ChargeRate, DischargeRate, RemainingCapacity, Voltage
How much charge does it hold?
What is the charge rate after the orange LED stops blinking?
Does the tray icon ever change? Mine hasn’t in 2 day, have not had time yet to try longer.

My battery shows some markings on one side (all original Sony stickers are still there thou), so I assume it might have been opened and the cells replaced. This would explain the strange behavior; the battery electronics perhaps has problems adapting to new cells, which hold more charge than the old worn out ones did.
Or perhaps the batteries are out of balance, so the small 3mA current is a try to balance them?

Well, the icon hasn’t gone to “charged” in 3 months now, and the battery
still hasn’t exploded and still seems to work. The fact that the blinking
hardware LED behaves just at it should, namely charging after a discharge, and stopping charging after a reasonable time, are an indicator that the
actual battery-management is basically working, imo. Perhaps indeed the
batteries got old and are constantly charged by a small current. I take
the risk that this might be bad… its still better than removing the
battery all the time, esp. since this increases the likelihood of a “crash”
due to power outage or more likely, unintentional removal of the power
plug. If after 3 months everything’s ok, I suppose it will last. The battery
does not get hot either (though this doesn’t mean much, probably). I couldn’t
figure out the perfmon program, I get stupid errors etc. If you want, you
could give step by step directions, then I will tell you about “my currents”

Another thing: What do you think, how bad is it, when running at max, to a) have the laptop on the bet (matrace), and b) have the laptop display closed. In both cases, the surface gets awfully hot. I avoid it to my best, since I think I lost my last laptop because of overheating. Hovever, what I am saying is, do you think the laptop is made explicitly so the display is NOT to be closed when the cpu is running max? I saw the illustration with the books (etc) that shouldn t be placed on the cpu part, but I can’t remember comments on the display. Kind of a stupid quetion… Been awake all night, bare with me.

Oh, and things are getting worse, the joint at the powerbutton is getting more and more annoying, bad build quality the whole element, doesn’t work smooth, and the power button itself stopped working when the diplay is in certain positions. Really crappy for such a supposedely HQ device.

m.

I will post Perfmon images & howto next week…

OK, back now…

Heat issue:
I think using on matrace should be OK (better than “normal” notebooks with fan intake on the bottom).if
With CPU on max, it gets awfully hot though. Under XP (as far as I’ve tested so far) it does not run at 1.1GHz for long - a few minutes, then the CPU gets throttled down to reduce heat (even with power management set to performance).
As far as CPU goes, it can sustain up to 100 deg C according to spec, so the CPU will not die, but the heat can put some stress on other components on PCB & solder joints. I would not recommend closing LCD though - cooling will be affected & heat can damage LCD.

For Perfmon:
Go to Start - Run, type perfmon & Enter or
Programs - Administrative tools - Performance

Then click “+” button (add, Ctrl+I) from Perforance-options select BatteryStatus (this option is not always shown; might require a restart with batttery power). From batterystatus, select all options. Units are mW and mWh respectfully.  You also need to set sampling interval, etc.

Hello fortexg,

thanks for your replies!

> batttery power). From batterystatus, select all options. Units are mW and
> mWh respectfully.  You also need to set sampling interval, etc.

I did this. Results were (did it yesterday, therefore only orders of magnitude) : As soon as the charging signal of the hardware LED stopped, charging dropped from s.th. like 5000+ to s.th. like 37 (exactly the same as yours, btw.). I suppose the 37 is the reason for the tray icon indicating charge, even though this low charge rate is probably not a problem for the batteries (I hope).

M.

Hi Matthias,
Nice that you have set up the Perfmon; I had a bunch of screengrab images prepared, only to find out the “files” (=images) on this forum must be <75kb (no problem, increased jpeg compression) @ 800x600 max (mine were, of course, 1024x768, and not good after scaling to 800x600…).

I think this 37mW (or about 3mA current @ 12.5V) is trickle charge (small compared to 2000mAh battery capacity) which seems to be always on.

My old Dell Latitude D600 for instance, does not recharge a full battery for a week or so, which is better for battery life than constant trickle charge. This depends on charge algorithm in BIOS.
The x505 BIOS looks pretty poor & featureless (more like a cheap no-name machine than a high-end like x505 was when released).

Would be nice to hear from somebody else about this constant charge issue thow (Eric?)

Two completely different issues:

1. does your machine have German keyboard? Mine is UK (the vertical Enter key is much better IMHO than US layout horizontal one). Am looking for German layout since it can easily be adapted to my native - Slovene.

2. Point stick:
The original driver is (like BIOS) very basic - no separate mouse/stick speed settings, no sensitivity setting, no double-click speed, ... But most annoying: can not use the tap function (tap on stick = click) - I can do that (& set it’s sensitivity) on D600, which has both - touch pad & point stick. Even tried using Dell driver, but no help.
So, can it be done - use tap on point stick as left button click?

: 1. does your machine have German keyboard?

I have a Japanese one, which is even better than the German one imho. (Can configure additional buttons, Enter key is like German.)
I do not know what you ment, but surely no-one will swap their keyboard for yours, because this is extremely tedious and expensive, cf. posts on this subject in this forum.

: 2. Point stick: So, can it be done - use tap on point stick as left button click?

I do not see the problem because the mouse buttons are exactly where one’s thumb is. Why should one want to use the stick? It is ALL a matter of getting used to it. Same goes for the enter key, I had a horizontal one before, after 2-4 weeks you hardly notice the difference.

m

(PS. I am offline for 2-3 weeks from now on.)

1: I meant buying another x505 & selling this one
2: No offence, but this is very subjective - everybody has their own opinion. The question is whether this works or not (looks like not)
For me, it is much easier to use tap function on the point stick (and use touchpad + tap constantly - up to the point I use mouse for CAD work only) than using another button for this. This way, you can click+drag or select text using just one finger.

Hi , I see!

Just two notes:

- If you are not on the go, I would really recommend a mouse. Even
an optimal trackpoint is way inferior.

- I bought a Logitech laser mouse (mx1000) and refused to use
it for months because I thought it was too heavy. Within a few
weeks, my attitude and feelings towards it changed, and suddenly
I actually prefer it to any other mouse. So changing once attitude
does make a difference, especially if the reasons are not all-that-objective!

Good luck finding an alternative x505! If I were you, though, I would
keep it for 1 year and then buy a faster machine of the same size.

Ciao.

m

Agree about the mx1000 - a great mouse.

Still waiting for somebody else’s comment about constant charge…

Got the second (German) X505.
Battery seems original Sony, unopened, non-refurbished, but battery charge icon behaviour is the same. Still constant charge rate of 37mW.
Sure would appreciete someone else’s feedback…