is my t41 battery life of 2 hrs normal?

Message

pufftissue · #1 Post by **pufftissue** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:26 am

Hi,

I ran battery health, and my battery is showing good health, 37 watts is considered full charge now, in brand new condition it was 47 watts.
So I've lost about 20-25% of my original charge, which is about right given that my system is around 9 months old.

Question:
1. Surfing the net wirelessly with the a/b/g card, at next to max brightness, how much battery life are you guys getting? I get 2 hours maximum. I have the 60 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.

I am asking this because subjectively the Vaio S series is at near max super duper brightness and going for nearly 3.75 to 4 hrs on wireless. The 600m is going for 3.5 hrs.

Even brand new I never, ever got my battery life to the nearly 5 hours that is advertised. Even at lower screen brightness settings. I'm just wondering if there is anything to account for this perceived discrepancy, because I figure I'm using my notebook "regularly" like everyone else. But just no juice.

hiengu · #2 Post by **hiengu** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 4:18 am

I just got a T41 with similar specs as you last Friday. I haven't gotten 4 hours that's for sure, but that's probably cuz of my settings. I get between 2 to 3.

I'm still learning to tweak this thing.

pufftissue · #3 Post by **pufftissue** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 4:14 pm

pufftissue wrote:Hi,

I ran battery health, and my battery is showing good health, 37 watts is considered full charge now, in brand new condition it was 47 watts.
So I've lost about 20-25% of my original charge, which is about right given that my system is around 9 months old.

Question:
1. Surfing the net wirelessly with the a/b/g card, at next to max brightness, how much battery life are you guys getting? I get 2 hours maximum. I have the 60 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.

I am asking this because subjectively the Vaio S series is at near max super duper brightness and going for nearly 3.75 to 4 hrs on wireless. The 600m is going for 3.5 hrs.

Even brand new I never, ever got my battery life to the nearly 5 hours that is advertised. Even at lower screen brightness settings. I'm just wondering if there is anything to account for this perceived discrepancy, because I figure I'm using my notebook "regularly" like everyone else. But just no juice.

OK, so to quote and answer myself:

I have looked extensively on various forums and it seems that everyone on a centrino with similar size/weight should squeeze 3.5 hours out of a notebook. 2-2.5 hrs (with max conservation) is just gonna be unacceptable to me.

So I called IBM and they didn't really give me any hassle about it. The real value of my brand new battery that is being sent to me is that it'll give me peace of mind that: 1. I'm not imagining things, my battery is defective or 2. The T41's battery life is completely overrated.

I will be ok with whichever one it turns out to be.

It just kills me that I've invested so much into this notebook and I could buy a $750 dell 600m that has longer battery life, better wireless range, and a similar size/weight.

Plinkerton · #4 Post by **Plinkerton** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 4:37 pm

My T42 seems to get good battery life overall. It probably gets close to 3.5-4 hours on average. I usually have the brightness set almost to the lowest setting, because I have no problem seeing it. Even when i bump it up a little though, the battery still seems to keep going. I usually have it set on High Battery Performance.

#5 Post by **K. Eng** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 4:45 pm

I know several people with 600m and D600 machines, and the battery life on those is only about 4 hours max, with typical being 3 hours.

Something must be wrong with your T41. I've got a meager 31 watt/hrs of battery capacity left out of the original 48 watt/hrs, and I'm still getting about 2.5 hours of use with WiFi enabled and screen brightness set to half. I was getting nearly 4 hours of use under the same conditions when the battery was new, and 5+ hours if WiFi was off and the screen dimmed all the way.

pufftissue wrote:
pufftissue wrote: So I called IBM and they didn't really give me any hassle about it. The real value of my brand new battery that is being sent to me is that it'll give me peace of mind that: 1. I'm not imagining things, my battery is defective or 2. The T41's battery life is completely overrated.
...
It just kills me that I've invested so much into this notebook and I could buy a $750 dell 600m that has longer battery life, better wireless range, and a similar size/weight.

pufftissue · #6 Post by **pufftissue** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 5:11 pm

K. Eng,

Yes, I am hoping that something is wrong. I've done everything mentioned in these forums and it's a no go.
I just timed it again:

custom performance

Adaptive processor
no wifi
have wired ethernet connection
brightness was at 6
7200 rpm hard drive
screen off in 1 min if no use
standby in 3 minutes

All I did was surf, that's it. Went to eat lunch for about 10-15 minutes.

After all that, the battery shut down with 0 minutes left at 2 hrs and 14 minutes or something like that. But I was away for probably around 20 minutes of that.

I remember in June, when my laptop was a mere 3.5 months old, when i used wifi, with max brightness, i would struggle for 2 hrs of usage. And it just [censored] me off that all my friends' notebooks were substantially better than mine regarding battery life. It really [censored] me off when I told them I had disabled everything, was so conscious of screen brightness, and they just said they never paid any attention to that kind of stuff and it just got that kind of life.

t41user · #7 Post by **t41user** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 5:46 pm

I respectfully have a different impression of T40 and T41 battery life from K. Eng. On the 6 cell, I have always gotten around 2-3 hours maximum on high system performance schemes. I only get maybe 4-5 hours maximum on high battery performance schemes, and it's usually more like 3 or 3.5 hours when running CPU intensive operations even on high battery peformance schemes. Although IBM often seems easily willing to replace batteries that are still under warranty, IBM also often seems easily willing to admit that they falsely and/or misleadingly provide inaccurate information about battery life in their advertising. If anyone has a different impression, I suggest recording your phone calls and repeatedly calling IBM tech support and asking them if 2-3 hours maximum battery life is normal or to be expected. If you do this, say 10 times, how many of those times do you think the IBM representative will tell you that 2-3 hours is normal?

hiengu · #8 Post by **hiengu** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:12 pm

I think the power requirements of K. Eng's machine is less so maybe he can get that many hours, but between 2 to 3 is what I'm getting. Hmmm, maybe I should call IBM for a new battery as well???

What I also notice is that on standby, the next day my battery is significantly drained ... I think last time I checked 10% of it had drained from 100% down to 90% with the latest BIOS. Before that I noticed it had drained 30-40% in one night.

Any ideas?

pufftissue · #9 Post by **pufftissue** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:09 pm

hiengu wrote:I think the power requirements of K. Eng's machine is less so maybe he can get that many hours, but between 2 to 3 is what I'm getting. Hmmm, maybe I should call IBM for a new battery as well???

What I also notice is that on standby, the next day my battery is significantly drained ... I think last time I checked 10% of it had drained from 100% down to 90% with the latest BIOS. Before that I noticed it had drained 30-40% in one night.

Any ideas?

i just have no idea how you guys could squeeze in 4 hrs out of the battery, no matter what. Certainly I believe you, but I also believe myself. So the only way is to get a new battery. If it still doesn't work, then I will conclude that I don't know how to conserve a battery, but I will also be getting a different computer b/c I have used laptops that get far better life than my T41. It's just that IBM advertises battery life as a big selling point of its systems vs other vendors, so that's why I am persevering so much. And the fact that ibms are priced at such a premium over its competitors, also has made me a lot more hypercritical than I would be of a $1300 dell. While I bet nothing is really "wrong" with my T41, this experience with my T41 has shown me that I'm not man enough for a thinkpad at these prices. That 600m got better life, was marginally heavier, had better battery performance, had a dvd burner option on the cheap, and was roughly 40% cheaper than my T41.

hiengu · #10 Post by **hiengu** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:34 pm

I also had debated between a Dell or IBM. We use Dell's at work, but I had an IBM T23 for a few months so that hooked me on IBM laptops due to the form factor.

I've been tweaking and stress testing my laptop with Prime95 and stuff before I make it my main development environment.

Using mobilemeter to check how many watts I am discharging and it seems I can get 3 hours on medium LCD brightness and wireless ON. I'm happy with 3 hours on a battery but was expecting 4 hours. I imagine if I started compiling code that battery life will be much shorter but with the CPU running at 600 mhz instead of 1700 mhz on batteries, I don't expect anything intensive can be done unless I'm using the AC adapter. Maybe one day we can run at full speed on batteries for 3+ hours then I'd be impressed.

What disturbs me the most right now and I'm still trying to figure this one out is why I lose so much battery life when things are on standby, and the seemingly short wireless range. The keyboard does also seem louder but perhaps cuz my laptop was surprisingly made in China.

t41user · #11 Post by **t41user** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:46 pm

Just two more points. First, the big joke, according to some people, is that the only way to get the battery life advertised by IBM is to leave your thinkpad on but otherwise totally inactive with a battery performance scheme. As soon as you run any programs other than a basic OS, you will get lower battery life times than those advertised by IBM. (Of course, the virtues of thinkpads may be sufficiently great, and the comparative battery drawbacks sufficiently small, that thinkpads justifiably remain the unquestioned choice of laptops for many users. Still, the battery advertising seems misleading to some people) The second point is that it seems reasonable for a battery to retain at least 80% of its intended life for the first year of use. Perhaps not many batteries meet this expectation - do they? Is it unreasonable to expect a warranty battery replacement if the actual full charge capacity of a battery drops below 80 or 70% percent of its design charge capacity within one year?

hiengu · #12 Post by **hiengu** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:20 pm

t41user ... I feel that if we are purchasing supposedly the "Bentley of Laptops" that everything should be exceptional considering the price premium.

Now if I can just figure out why standby mode drains so much power from my battery, hmmm.

Plinkerton · #13 Post by **Plinkerton** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 12:27 am

I don't know if I would call these the "Bentley of Laptops". Maybe the Mercedes, or the BMWs (the expensive ones).

lfeagan · #14 Post by **lfeagan** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 1:11 am

Plinkerton wrote:I don't know if I would call these the "Bentley of Laptops". Maybe the Mercedes, or the BMWs (the expensive ones).

Totally, RDI / Tadpole notebooks are perhaps the closest thing to a Bentley of notebooks that I know of. Their Bullfrog Dual has two UltraSPARC IIIi 1.2 GHz CPUs and up to 16GB RAM. Or maybe the Itronix GoBook III if more rugged solutions are your thing. Though rugged notebooks don't exactly seem so much so Bentley as they do world's largest earth mover or space shuttle crawler.

http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/html/products/mobile/
http://www.itronix.com

hiengu · #15 Post by **hiengu** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 2:51 am

I actually got that "Bentley of Laptops" comment from Tom's Hardware. Not sure if you guys are familiar with that site.

Here's the link: http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030418/index.html

hiengu · #16 Post by **hiengu** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 2:54 am

At least for me, I prefer having a trackpoint. Maybe cuz I'm just lazy moving my hands all over the keyboard.

RCube · #17 Post by **RCube** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 8:36 pm

My t41 gets 3:45mins(6 cell batt)....longer if I am reading or typing notes mostly.
This is 1.7ghz(adaptive), 60gb 7200rpm, 802.11 a/b/g(on), brighness at level 6(I find the difference between 5 and 6 isn't big as 6 and 7). Both screen and hd off set to 3 mins. And when they do turn off...the machine gets like 5-6 hours :p

hiengu · #18 Post by **hiengu** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 8:49 pm

RCube, I have the exact same laptop model as you but with 1GB upgrade memory. I'm also from the Vancouver area.

Did you enable/disable WOL in the BIOS or do anything special? Do you suffer from any overnight battery drainage in standby or hibernation?

What BIOS / embedded controller versions do you have?

dpb · #19 Post by **dpb** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:05 pm

Yeah, I go to Tom's Hardware every day. Big deal.

Have I got this straight? You're looking for 5 hours on a 6-cell battery?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, p'tui! I'm chokin' here!

Look, there's a night and day difference between the 6-cell and 9-cell batteries. Over the life of the battery, the 9-cell will give you at least twice the runtime. If you really think buying a $100 battery (easily available on eBay) that gives you a reliable 4+ hours is too much to ask, I think you deserve a Dull, dude!

RCube · #20 Post by **RCube** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:10 pm

Oh cool! Good to see another thinkpad users in the vancouver area....same model too!

Mine should have 1gb too...but the 512mb stick I ordered online have been stuck in customs for two weeks now. Who knows when it will come out.

I didn't touch the bios, so my WOL is enabled. I keep my tp plugged in over night(hibernate) and it lose a few percent. Like the next day I usually see 97%...I never had it off for more than 24 hours.

bios 3.08a
embedded controller 3.03

dpb · #21 Post by **dpb** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:32 pm

To answer the original question more directly (and less sarcastically), the 6-cell battery appears to be a dog. I've had two 6-cells and two 9-cells.The 6-cells have a tendency to lose peak storage capacity very precipitously when they are allowed to drop below 6% charge.

The tad bit of extra weight and bulk of the 9-cell is both minimal and, in a way, irrelevant because you simply must have the 9-cell if you are using the battery for any significant length of time. With the 9-cell battery, the T4x series laptop is the best overall laptop on the market today (although the X4x series is almost equally attractive).

hiengu · #22 Post by **hiengu** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:01 pm

Joking aside, I'd be happy to just get a solid 3 hours and not have my battery drain 3% to 4% every 2 hours on standby. Also, this T41 china keyboard doesn't feel as good as my old T23.

I checked out our Dell 8600s at work and they get 4 hours easy and have strong wireless strength.

sugo · #23 Post by **sugo** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:12 am

hiengu wrote:I checked out our Dell 8600s at work and they get 4 hours easy and have strong wireless strength.

Well, they have a 9 cell 72Wh battery and they weight like 7 pounds

is my t41 battery life of 2 hrs normal?

is my t41 battery life of 2 hrs normal?

Re: is my t41 battery life of 2 hrs normal?

Re: is my t41 battery life of 2 hrs normal?

T4x poor battery life

two more points

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