T61 - windows 7 - batteri life

[eyeland]

Dunno if this post blongs in the win7 forum but here goes:
I am trying to locate to locate the cause of what seem to me to an unusual low uptime on my t61 while on batteri.
In the autum I switched to Windows 7 while performing a number of hardwareupgrades/changes as well.
Normally I am mostly using this t61 in an advanced dockingstation but now that I am travelling it occurs to me that the batterilife is very bad.
I know that batteries deteriorate and this batteri is probably around 2 years old. Thing is, the lenovo power manager says that the batteri condition is good but I still only get around 2 hours of uptime (openoffice + occasional mp3listening while in the lowest possible powersettings)
Can the "batteri condition :good" be trusted or do I have a powersonsumption issue?
Can this be due to Win7?
I also noticed that my harddrive never stops spinning, even when there is no activity on the machine..

As far as I can tell, the machine is fully updated as to drivers and firmware... any thoughts?

[SHoTTa35]

Since you are using power manager, what's the actual wHrs left on the battery. On a new battery (6 cell) it's normally 56.16whrs so if you are only down to 33Whrs then obviously you wont get much battery. Still in that conditon it will be read as "good" till you get down to 20s i think.

[eyeland]

ok, it makes sense then as I'm down to 37...
Can anything be gained by performing a reset?

[americo24]

ok, it makes sense then as I'm down to 37...
Can anything be gained by performing a reset?

Lots of people (searched google) had problems with the reset on the t6x series it actually decreased there "whr" I had good luck with it on my ibm t43 idt added 4% to my battery.

[SHoTTa35]

As you said, batteries don't last forever and over time they just loose their capacity. Resetting doesn't cause you to loose but just calibrates the reader to the actual wattage left. So if you are reading at 37 now and do a reset and only have 33, it's cuz you always only had 33 to begin with. The software was just reading it wrong.

[eyeland]

ahaa, good to know
I wonder if I killed it by running it in "always charge fully" mode while docked for 1/2 a year ..
oh well.. its my first tp and it was a 2.hand repair-project so now I have a better idea of how to treat the t510 of my dreams once this t61 finally admits defeat
Thanks for the rapid responses, always a pleassure posting issues here

[eyeland]

hmm recent new development:
Still using my t61 and it has suddenly become virtually unusable on batteri as something seems to drain it.

I did a batteri reset, thinking that my batteri had died but I was suprised to see that the batteri anager still claims the batteri to have 37.93Wh with a 408 cycle count.
Can this information be trusted or is it still likely the batteri is actually dead?
Scenario:
Batteri is fully charged, I unplug charger and choose "maximum batteri life", gauge says roughly 2h 30m left and starts counting down normally and then BOOM!, suddenly the power drops to 10% and my auto sleep is activated.
What can cause this? a shortcircuit somewhere? something wrong with the wificard?
Gonna try a few different scenarios (like wifi on/off) to see if it has any effect. As written in my original post my HD still seems to always spin but even that didn't used to drain my batteri in this manner.

[RealBlackStuff]

The electronics in your battery are definitely off!
At 400 or more cycles, I'd say our battery has come to the end of its useful life.
Go buy another (OEM, not copy) battery.

[eyeland]

ahh ok, so the power manager can not be trusted when it says that the batteri condition is good I guess...
Been looking around a bit for a new batteri and its quite the jungle...
You're telling me to only get an original Lenovo Batteri and not one of the compatible ones from ebay?

[RealBlackStuff]

Of course you can buy a knock-off on eBay, they are (much) cheaper than OEM (Lenovo or IBM).
But their electronics are quite often not reliable, some even plain refuse to work, or stop working after a few days or weeks.
And they can also damage your laptop's charging circuit.
Look in the Lenovo Outlet or European equivalent and get a real, original battery.

[eyeland]

Been using Ebay bats for a while now and they do indeed suck, but as the korean seller sends me a new one for free everytime they fail the experience was not ALL bad, even if each unit only lasts 3-6 months
I have bben unable to locate an outletshop in EU, care to link if you know of any?
Thanks
Rune

[SHoTTa35]

Power Manager can only read what the battery tells it. If the battery says 37wHrs but only has 9wHrs then Power Manager will show you 37. After 2yrs (now 3 i guess since the first post was from January! - i think i had a T61 then also) then you can say you've gotten good usage out of that battery. I would love to get 2-3yrs of life from the new battery in this system. Some people get longer than that but then do they use their laptop as a mobile pc?

(Drives me nuts to see my friend with nice laptop and extended battery but has it always plugged in when she can get 8hrs unplugged!!)

[eyeland]

Just to report back:
The first ebay battery I bought lost capacity over a few months.
When I contacted the seller he agreed to send me a new one free of charge (exept for 5$postage). The new one has been running nicely for 3 months+ now with no sign of unexpected deterioration.

[madflava54]

Just to report back:
The first ebay battery I bought lost capacity over a few months.
When I contacted the seller he agreed to send me a new one free of charge (exept for 5$postage). The new one has been running nicely for 3 months+ now with no sign of unexpected deterioration.

Can you post a link to the ebay seller?

[eyeland]

I bought it from http://stores.ebay.com/plugplayers - the're on vacation now it seems.
Just remember not to leave any feedback until you've been using the battery for a while.
These guys REALLY don't like negative feedback and they'll go to great lenghts to ensure that you give them 5 stars which I assume is why they send me a new one as well as a BS excuse for the defective one:
"Dear Rune Abro
Thanks for your efforts.We are pleasure to resolve your problem before your negative feedback. Sorry for the50% POWER since the BATTERY STOCK was have a little time,so that lead to the battery easy to be lost power. Now Please try to charge it for 12 hours (1-2 times). if this battery working well,that is good. If not working 100%,we promised ship a working 100% battery to you again within 24 hours once receive your reply later."
On a sidenote, Though it works flawlessly in windows 7, today when I booted to a fresh Ubuntu install I got the message: "This battery might be recalled by Lenovo".
So, remmeber that some posters here advice strongly against non-original batteries.
The battery itself seems to be "Sanyo"

[madflava54]

I bought it from http://stores.ebay.com/plugplayers - the're on vacation now it seems.
Just remember not to leave any feedback until you've been using the battery for a while.
These guys REALLY don't like negative feedback and they'll go to great lenghts to ensure that you give them 5 stars which I assume is why they send me a new one as well as a BS excuse for the defective one:
"Dear Rune Abro
Thanks for your efforts.We are pleasure to resolve your problem before your negative feedback. Sorry for the50% POWER since the BATTERY STOCK was have a little time,so that lead to the battery easy to be lost power. Now Please try to charge it for 12 hours (1-2 times). if this battery working well,that is good. If not working 100%,we promised ship a working 100% battery to you again within 24 hours once receive your reply later."
On a sidenote, Though it works flawlessly in windows 7, today when I booted to a fresh Ubuntu install I got the message: "This battery might be recalled by Lenovo".
So, remmeber that some posters here advice strongly against non-original batteries.
The battery itself seems to be "Sanyo"

Cool, thanks. I'll look into them when they are back on the 15th.