battery time?

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jmagbita · #1 Post by **jmagbita** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 5:50 pm

how much battery life does your t series have after a full charge?

my new t42 (which i am returning next week cause i just ordered a t43) only shows a battery life of 3 hours after a full charge.. when i have my slim bay battery in it, it only says 4 hours 45 minutes...

is that it!?!

how bout you guys? how long does your battery last? anything i can do to increase battery life?

Flightvector · #2 Post by **Flightvector** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:16 pm

I run my computer at the slowest speedstep and at the lowest backlight output level while running on battery power. I do use the WLAN for the internet, but that is about all the power I use when working on batteries (comes out to average approximately 10.8 Watts). At that level, I was able to consistently test 4:05 with the standard 6-cell battery (probably more like 3:55 now with my degraded charge capacity) of battery life. The battery life time estimates can be very inaccurate during fluctuating power usage and will obviously get significantly shorter with higher power usage.

To get more life, simply run as minimal a system usage as possible by cutting processes and reducing graphics acceleration and increasing wireless power conservation settings. Otherwise there is no magic answer. All you can do for the battery is to slow down its constant time-dependant loss of charge capacity to the minimal level by storing it in cool places and taking care of it and removing any other sources of charge reduction. Unfortunately, you should expect to lose a bit over 15% of charge capacity per year under a typical minimal usage.

#3 Post by **K. Eng** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:26 pm

My ThinkPad's specifications are in my signature.

When I'm running in battery mode, I have processor locked at 600 MHz (although Adaptive 600 MHz -> 1.3 GHz is about the same), screen brightness at 3 bars (50%), PowerPlay enabled on the Radeon 7500 graphics, and Wireless on and set to max power savings. My battery has degraded to 32 Watt*Hrs.

I clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes doing office work and browsing on the web. On a new battery, this translates to between 3.5 and 4 hours of battery life for a new 6-cell battery.

I have verified a max life of about 5 hours using the 6-cell. However, this is with screen brightness turned all the way down to 0 bars and wireless turned off.

jmagbita · #4 Post by **jmagbita** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 7:20 pm

i'm kinda new to all this so i was wondering what exactly you mean and how do you do the minimizing of the battery usage? what things do you change and how do you change them?

i'm also using wireless internet.. would changing the battery usage on that decrease performance? (i don't even really know what i could change for that anyway!!)

any help is greatly appreciated!!

craigg · #5 Post by **craigg** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 10:49 pm

Where exactly do you configure the feature to lock your cpu at 600mhz?

Thanks in advance!

K. Eng wrote:My ThinkPad's specifications are in my signature.

When I'm running in battery mode, I have processor locked at 600 MHz (although Adaptive 600 MHz -> 1.3 GHz is about the same), screen brightness at 3 bars (50%), PowerPlay enabled on the Radeon 7500 graphics, and Wireless on and set to max power savings. My battery has degraded to 32 Watt*Hrs.

I clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes doing office work and browsing on the web. On a new battery, this translates to between 3.5 and 4 hours of battery life for a new 6-cell battery.

I have verified a max life of about 5 hours using the 6-cell. However, this is with screen brightness turned all the way down to 0 bars and wireless turned off.

llama_thumper · #6 Post by **llama_thumper** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:16 am

i'd like to know too!

craigg · #7 Post by **craigg** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:51 am

Hey Thumper,

I figured out where to configure this option. Just click to launch the power manager from the system tray. You need to create a custom power scheme and then under "Maximum CPU Speed" select Low or Lowest. When I set this option my cpu is locked at 798mhz which I assume is the lowest setting for an Intel 2.0ghz chip.

#8 Post by **daeojkim** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:58 am

Use the battery maximizer and choose one of the schemes, there is one that is called "High Battery Performance" and will lock your CPU speed at 600MHz. YOu can always create / modify new power schemes to fit your needs.

craigg wrote:Where exactly do you configure the feature to lock your cpu at 600mhz?

Thanks in advance!

K. Eng wrote:My ThinkPad's specifications are in my signature.

When I'm running in battery mode, I have processor locked at 600 MHz (although Adaptive 600 MHz -> 1.3 GHz is about the same), screen brightness at 3 bars (50%), PowerPlay enabled on the Radeon 7500 graphics, and Wireless on and set to max power savings. My battery has degraded to 32 Watt*Hrs.

I clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes doing office work and browsing on the web. On a new battery, this translates to between 3.5 and 4 hours of battery life for a new 6-cell battery.

I have verified a max life of about 5 hours using the 6-cell. However, this is with screen brightness turned all the way down to 0 bars and wireless turned off.

craigg · #9 Post by **craigg** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:42 am

The lowest speed is not always 600mhz. I believe the speed varies with each cpu as Intel proves different speed steps for each model. As I posted, with the 2.0ghz the lowest is 798mhz.

daeojkim wrote:Use the battery maximizer and choose one of the schemes, there is one that is called "High Battery Performance" and will lock your CPU speed at 600MHz. YOu can always create / modify new power schemes to fit your needs.

llama_thumper · #10 Post by **llama_thumper** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:00 pm

thank you!

Grinch · #11 Post by **Grinch** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:00 pm

craigg wrote:The lowest speed is not always 600mhz. I believe the speed varies with each cpu as Intel proves different speed steps for each model. As I posted, with the 2.0ghz the lowest is 798mhz.

daeojkim wrote:Use the battery maximizer and choose one of the schemes, there is one that is called "High Battery Performance" and will lock your CPU speed at 600MHz. YOu can always create / modify new power schemes to fit your needs.

it does not depend on the speed of the cpu itself, the minimum clockrate depends on the FSB. Min. multiplier of Pentium M is 6x => FSB400/4(Quad-Pumped)=100*6 => 600Mhz (Banias/Dothan, 855)
FSB533/4=133*6 = 800MHz (Dothan2, 915 (Sonoma))

dexta · #12 Post by **dexta** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 10:07 am

I got 8 hours using the lowest brightness setting on a 9 cell battery. All I was doing was typing up a word and excel document, occasional web and pdf browsing and listening to mp3's for about 2 hours.

vjack · #13 Post by **vjack** » Thu May 19, 2005 8:44 pm

The highest brightness setting is already too dim - how can you handle using the lowest?

Kenn · #14 Post by **Kenn** » Thu May 19, 2005 8:55 pm

[quote="vjack"]The highest brightness setting is already too dim - how can you handle using the lowest?[/quote

Lol, turn out the lights in the rest of the room

Laptop LCD backlights are indeed pretty pathetic next to regular CRTs and desktop LCDs, no?

mlykke · #15 Post by **mlykke** » Fri May 20, 2005 11:17 am

vjack wrote:The highest brightness setting is already too dim - how can you handle using the lowest?

Maybe it depends on how old once eyes are

I find running the LCD on its highest setting so bright my eyes begin to hurt after a while so even when running on AC i turn it down a notch or two.

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