Thinkpads Forum

Battery stretch in vista got me thinking, how can i stretch battery life by other means? I have been letting my battery go down to around 20% before putting in a full charge and i dont live the adapter plugged in otherwise. So what else could I try?

Well in general, Li-Ion batteries don't like to be discharged that low So just keep the battery topped off most of the time especially if you have the ac adapter right there.

Other than the obvious things such as lowering brightness, turning off wireless devices, letting your HD spin down faster. 1min instead of 10. There isn't much else you can do to a normal system. There are hacks (undervolting the CPU) that you can do that'll give you longer run time but that's somewhat dangerous if you don't know what you are doing

A new battery always gives you longer run times too If the one you have is worn well a new one will fix it right up

around 35% or what?

You can disable devices on device manager to conserve power
you will be suprised how much power you can save by turning off those stuff like 1394, LAN (if you using the WIFI) card reader
LPT port com port and serial port disabled on bios

I have my T60 set to start charging at 30 and stop at 80, avoiding both too low and too high charge. This laptop sits plugged in almost all the time, how it's used is a factor in choosing settings as well.

I use the battery maintaince program in the Thinkpad Power manager.

The above 2 posts. Elaborate please?

Click your big green battery icon to bring up the IBM Power Manager. It does nothing to your short term battery life of course, the goal is to keep the battery from wearing out over the months.

http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=52