Latitude 7480

It probably would have been a good idea to create one generation with both docking options.

 

skylake is so unpredictable with battery life, if I don't have my charger I can only realistically expect 1.5 hrs from my 7470 , even as the estimated initially shows me 3-4 hours. All that said, im stocking up on 7470, since we are heavily vested on these docks throughout our offices.

I see the 7480 now allows full customization, but WWAN card is still not an option, from a quick chat with Dell, seems the WWAN cards are not ready yet.

 

You can't blame Skylake for erratic battery drain. Most likely something is using the CPU. Task Manager may reveal the culprit or you may need to use a more advanced tool such as Sysinternals Process Explorer. It could be something like indexing or virus scanning which decide to get to work when they think the computer isn't being used. Under light usage the CPU utilisation should be no more than 5% and, if you want decent battery time then make sure that the display brightness is turned down. Enabling Airplane Mode except when you want to access the internet may also significantly improve the battery time as it stops programs from looking for updates, etc.

John

 

Full workday on my 7470, something's not quite right with yours I suspect.
Wouldn't happened to have McAfee or Norton Enterprise on that heh?

 

I'm thinking some smart businesses are going to make sure they are stocked up on quad-core E5470's, that should last then well into the future.
As for your battery issue, what battery do you have? If you got the small one that might be your issue.

 

admittedly I run a heavy workload: about 30 chrome tabs, outlook, and bunch of other ligher / background apps (dropbox, RDP, skype on the background, google drive, Malwarebytes, kaspersky, gotomeeting, and the usual bunch of apps that are pinging the internet for updates.), i typically keep my brightness one or two notches above min.

But even when im midnful about what is running, close every single process i can without crashing windows, limit my tabs, and have brightness on min, ive only been able to squeeze about 4 hours... (from an initially estimated 6-7 hours)

 

Then no surprise about the short run time. BatteryInfoView will probably show that the system is probably using 10W or more. The solution is to get a notebook with an enormous battery. The new Precision 5520 has a 97Whr battery option.

However, one tweak you can try is setting the maximum CPU state when running on battery to 99%, which disables Turbo mode (where CPU power consumption increases more than the gain in performance) but any change in battery time is likely to be modest.

John

 

I wish someone would make a business class machine with ability to do a SSD and hard drive.

 

thank you for the suggestion, I will limit it to 99%.

I was interested in the precision / new XPS 15, but no WWAN card available there, which I need.

 

Got a 7480 with a 27" U2717D and WD15 "dock".
Pics: http://imgur.com/a/ixzlO