X41 tablet with LED screen - possible?

[Ophilar]

Hi everyone

Does anyone know if it is possible to install a LED screen on X41 tablet?
Has anyone tried it?

I'm trying to find ways to lower the power consumption, and it seems somewhat fun modding it ...

Thanks,

Ron

[sjthinkpader]

Welcome to the forum.

The later CCFs are very power efficient already. Using LED does not save that much power. e.g. CCF are line source and LEDs are point source. To save power would be to use less LEDs. Then some dark spots may appear.

[Ophilar]

Thanks

Do you recommend some specific models? I'm not sure about the x41t screen, but I believe it's the original one from 4-5 years ago.
How much power do you think I could save by replacing?

[loyukfai]

Just FYI, some of us talked about this some time before...

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=83750

Nice weekend.

[Ophilar]

Many many thanks.It's a useful and an interesting read.

I'm looking for a way to cheaply and effectively lower the power consumption of my x41 tablet. I can't afford buying a new convertible ...

I thought that replacing the screen and the hdd is the best way for this (Maybe using an IDE/ZIF-CF adapter). I've seen a lot of discussion but it is much cluttered.

Does anyone can advise me briefly on this?

Nice weekend

[loyukfai]

I've considered replacing the screen with LED backlight before, but the cost was prohibitively high (and the current CCFL, while dimmer than before, are still doing okay). I do see some cheaper parts from China, but quality is a concern. Anyway, should the backlight went south, I'll probably just hire someone to fix it and see what options are available by then.

With regard to SSD, if $$$ is not a (serious) concern for you, just get the official Lenovo 60GB SSD, I see there a few of them on eBay for USD200 (excl. shipping) as I'm typing this.

There seem to be at least 4 different options:

1. Official Lenovo 60GB (re-branded Samsung). No 2010-error. Most expensive.

2. 3rd party SSD in 1.8" PATA form factors. 2010-errors, less expensive but less performance.

3. CF-IDE with CF cards. 2010-errors, price and performance depends on the CF used.

4. Mod the mainboard with SATA. Most tinkering-needed. See http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90285

Cheers.

[Ophilar]

Again - many many thanks! Your links are most helpful.

I'm afraid $200 is too much for me. It seems that there's no easy nor cheap way to decrease the power consumption

I'm just wondering about the IDE-CF adapter - I don't have much need for space in this case, and I believe the cost of an adapter with a CF card (16 GB) is about $50-$60. I'm not sure this is worth the effort or the money - do you have information as to how much power this arrangement would save?

As well, are the new CCFL LCD better in terms of power consumption than the old screens?

[sjthinkpader]

There is a PATA ZIF Sandisk and Samsung SSD available. I have a few listed in Marketplace.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=90243
They do give 2010 error and performance is similar to the Lenovo version.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 1&start=60
(Mar 2nd post)

I would set the HDD spin down and screen blank timers in power manager to save power. Of course SSD doesn't need spin down timer. Use adaptive CPU power as much as possible.

[ZAGNUT]

RMclock can do wonders for saving power: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=75248

unplugged my X41 rarely if ever goes above 600MHz and if i turn wifi off i can get close to 5 hours out of my 8 cell that only charges up to 2/3 of it's original capacity. runs much cooler now and the fan only comes on when i'm somewhere very hot. disabling everything you don't use will also help, little by little it all adds up. do you ever use the infrared connection? bluetooth? modem? i suppose tossing the 2GB of memory i added would also help but i gotta draw the line somewhere...

[Ophilar]

Cool

I'm having more difficulties with Linux though. Disabling devices gave me another half hour on Windows, but I don't know how to do that on Linux ...

I guess that moving to Windows 7 from XP was a bad move, as I have only 3.5 hours of battery life with a configuration similar to yours Zagnut.

Trying RMclock next. Any Linux advice is welcome. I use openSUSE 11.3 with KDE.

[RealBlackStuff]

Go back to XP, and look for the Windows FLP version.
You'll be glad you did, and your battery will thank you.

[j-dawg]

In Linux, consider installing Powertop, an Intel utility to determine what is "waking up" your processor and help reduce your consumption. I don't know if it will work perfectly on a P-M, but it will be a helpful tool to see what processes are eating your cycles and battery life.

[Ophilar]

Thanks to both of you.

I have powertop installed, but the advice it gives me is to increase writeback time only. I'll post the active processes somewhere to get more specific advice.

I'll check the possibility of going back to XP, too.

[ZAGNUT]

I guess that moving to Windows 7 from XP was a bad move, as I have only 3.5 hours of battery life with a configuration similar to yours Zagnut.

kepp in mind that i'm also using an SSD and the SATA-PATA bridge which i believe is a power hog has also been removed from the system board.

the XP i'm using has been slimmed down with HFslip using the FDV fileset and is lighter, quicker and less of of resource hog than FLP could hope to be...it's also legal which FLP is most likely not as it was never made available for retail or OEM use. also a lot of the "SSD tweaks" i'm using to limit writes also save some power. every little bit here and there adds up to a significant chunk in the end.

[Ophilar]

@ZAGNUT: That's a lot of useful information. Many thanks!

It seams like a lot of work eventually, though the gain is substantial. I guess I'll try all this in about six months ... HFslip, FDV sounds interesting, and I'll check about them.

Removing the SATA-PATA bridge sounds dangerous. I'll read about it more - does it have impact on performance and enable SATA commands? I find its presence useless and annoying - such a deliberate hindering of performance. I understand that SATA itself is much better than PATA it terms of power and performance in any computer ...

Thanks again

EDIT: Did you blog about your tweaks or wrote them somewhere? I see HFslip is incompatible with win 7, and I'd rather stick with win 7 for now ...