Standby really sucking battery power

[nikemen]

I know we have discussed this a bit before, more from the hibernation standpoint. But, I have done a quick test over the past couple of days. When I put my T41 to sleep at night, for about eight hours, the battery goes from 90% to 12% overnight.

Startup in the morning, and boom I have about 15 minutes before the thing is giving me warnings.

WHAT is using this power? I never had this much power drain when I was using a T20 and A20?

any thoughts for ways to reduce consumption?

[Volker]

What happens if you hibernate, does the battery also drain? Does the battery drain if you remove it over night? (Neither should, I just want to know whether it is a hardware problem).

Assuming that the battery only drains during suspend-to-ram, can you describe your system? Model number? did you change any drivers compared to the preloaded ones?

[nikemen]

What happens if you hibernate, does the battery also drain? Does the battery drain if you remove it over night? (Neither should, I just want to know whether it is a hardware problem).

Assuming that the battery only drains during suspend-to-ram, can you describe your system? Model number? did you change any drivers compared to the preloaded ones?

Hey, thanks for the response.
I haven't tried pulling the battery, I'll try that tonite. Hibernate tests do not reduce battery too much, couple % a day. Seems reasonable.

As for system, this is a T41, 2373-4gu. 802.11abg, 14" using mostly wireless. I have the system in power most of the time, only when I am away is it unplugged. I have a newer 9 cell battery that I have just started charging ,testing, somehow I don't think it really does the battery switch well. The battery monitor software doesn't auotmatically recognize the new battery has much more power and it takes a while to get it to show really high hour numbers, after putting it in. For example, battery mon says the 6 cell has 3:56 minutes remainng. Then I put in a fully charged 9 cell, and the battery mon says now 4:35. I should be much higher than that and in actuallity it is.
But, losing so much nightly on Standby is strange and poor.

[Volker]

I think it is normal if the battery loses a few percent over night. There is no simple way to determine the actual remaining charge for batteries, so some circuit guesses based on the current voltage. Not that precise.

It does not matter wheter or not the battery maximizer recognizes the battery switch or not, this should have no impact especially since no programs are running during the actual suspend.

You should try to find out if the notebook wakes up during the night, either wake over lan / phone or by a timer (there is a wake up timer in the bios).

Did you change any driver, like install a different graphics driver from the IBM supplied one? Or is everything as in the original state?

[nikemen]

Well, I do have the hacked ATI drvier there, to enable 1600x resolution, but only when hooked up to my Dell 21" monitor. I cannot imagine that that driver is sucking the power.

Other than that, I have updated most items over time, WLAN drivers, AConncetions, doing everything in the right order. The laptop works great, but this issue is starting to bug me.

[Volker]

I'm usually running Linux, and there something also sucks the battery dry during suspend-to-ram. I always suspected that the IBM video driver has some "magic sauce" to properly put the Radeon to sleep. But it is very hard to debug a sleeping system.

When I'm dual-booting to the Windows XP i can suspend just fine (with the default IBM drivers). I'd really like to try your video driver, can you tell me where you got it from? Then I could make sure wheter or not it is the video driver.

[G2007]

I know we have discussed this a bit before, more from the hibernation standpoint. But, I have done a quick test over the past couple of days. When I put my T41 to sleep at night, for about eight hours, the battery goes from 90% to 12% overnight.

My T series does the same thing when I put it into standby from battery power, but when I go to standby from AC power, the battery drain in standby is normal.

I have no idea why.

[nikemen]

If you go to standby from AC power, shouldn't there be, like no battery drain?

[kjarrett]

If you go to standby from AC power, shouldn't there be, like no battery drain?

No, standby always uses power.

Hibernate, on the other hand, is a "power off" state, and the only juice you should lose is normal charge degradation, as if the battery was out of the computer completely.

-kj-

[ElvinTampico]

I had a 14-inch T-42 that sucked batter power on standby at the rate of at least 10-15percent an hours. The 15-inch Flexview models seem to be much better, draining maybe 4-5 percent an hour.

Tech support said the extreme power drain on the 14 inch was normal.

[Plinkerton]

My 14 inch T42 drained about 2 percent in 3 hours or so.

[nikemen]

Hey, maybe a test everyone with T41, 14" or t42 14"

Charge it up, put it in standby, go to bed, wake up and check it out.

repot back here?