Thinkpads Forum

Hello everybody,

Did anyone notice any issues with power management and battery health after upgrading to windows 8?

Something very strange just happened to me: After upgrading my x60s to win8, its modestly healthy 8-cell battery (300 cycle counts, 53wh) suddenly died. I know this is an issue with x60 batteries and thought it's a coincidence. I switched to a nearly new 8-cell battery, left it charge overnight and this morning I unplugged the x60. After 20mins or so of light use the battery was completely drained and the laptop switched off without any warning like "low battery" etc. Plugged the power back, and now it's re-charging from zero!

Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, do not install any new OS before at least Service Pack 1 is out.
The latest is never the greatest, especially from Micro$haft!
They are using you and all those other clueless eejits as paying guinea pigs, to find the myriad problems that are always included in a new design.

try installing lenovo power management driver.
I particularly never experienced it on my x61 tablet which is running windows 8 right now. I did however experienced the issue once when I upgraded an a31 to windows 7.
I got it resolved by installing the respective power management for the given OS.

kokni wrote:Did anyone notice any issues with power management and battery health after upgrading to windows 8?

Only positive; I am now getting approximately 25% better battery life under Windows 8 compared to Vista, without a single Lenovo utility installed.

@kokni

After upgrading my x60s to win8, its modestly healthy 8-cell battery (300 cycle counts, 53wh) suddenly died

precisely the same thing has literally just happened to me yesterday therefore it is no coincidence, my view is we have a "recreated problem" which we can make a claim against Lenovo for. Battery was running around 50% of design capacity. Upgraded to win 8, ran ok for 3 weeks then died. now shows "91% available, plugged, not charging", but battery light flashing quickly continuously and wont power on via battery. Argh! New battery = £150. No way.

The problem must be Lenovo's Win 8 power management driver blowing up the circuitry on the battery and/or the cells right? Which makes it Lenovo's fault. Whether they fully support win 8 on the x60s or not is neither here nor there. They released an official driver to microsoft update for win 8 on the x60s which blew up our battery: their fault, they must resolve.

The fact that Power Manager is not compatible with Windows 8 makes it impossible to recalibrate the battery or diagnose/fix battery problems. Through internet research/talking to Lenovo I have found out that there is a "Lenovo Settings" windows app store app which is only available to machines shipped with Win 8 onboard (the app can only be installed on machines with a unique code installed by the OEM in the BIOS). Outrageous way to treat owners of £1500 laptops just because they are a few years old.

The points to be made to Lenovo are:
(a) fix the driver and replace our batteries free of charge
(b) Get them to release Lenovo Settings app for our machine

Perhaps if we both complain together they will do something. Interested?!

You've got no case and no leg to stand on. You said it yourself, the battery was at 50%, which to me means it's on the way out. All you got is speculation. Of course if you can afford to buy a bunch more batteries, scientifically test and prove that by reloading Win 8 it fails every time and you are willing to spend some money on lawyers. You might have a case.

When Lenovo/IBM design, built and create the X60/X61 series, it was NOT designed with Win 8 in mind. It was designed for Win XP and some later units were for Vista. So the fact that "Power Manager is not compatible with Windows 8" can easily be defended by Lenovo.

For what it's worth.......

I am running Win8 and Ubuntu 12.04 on my x61s. With the slim battery that is 75% worn I am getting about an hour to an hour and 15m out it with Win8 and about 30m more with Ubuntu. Considering the state of the battery I do not think it is much of an issue.

Good luck

@cigarguy

When Lenovo/IBM design, built and create the X60/X61 series, it was NOT designed with Win 8 in mind.

Dude, no one designed any laptop before about June 2012 with Win 8 in mind, unless they had a time machine. Following your logic, anyone who upgrades to Win 8 on any pre-June 2012 laptop has only themselves to blame. That is not a helpful comment, to put it mildly.

At least 6 people on this and another thread have experienced precisely the same issue. There is clearly a problem. The question is how to resolve it. If you have a helpful suggestion in this regard, we would all be grateful.

It means that Lenovo do not have to provide support past Vista. Having said that, no one does this. They will typically provide support for the next gen of software or two to keep their customer happy. And if they do, they will do it in their own sweet time.

You speculate that you have a problem with an application that is not officially release for the OS that you are using (not yet anyways), an OS which in turn was never officially supported by Lenovo to be used on your machine. I can guarantee you no X60 or X61 came out of the factory with Win 8 nor was there any document stating that it was design or meant to run on Win 8. Yes I can see how you have a case for a lawsuit. Good luck.

@cigarguy

I can guarantee you no X60 or X61 came out of the factory with Win 8 nor was there any document stating that it was design or meant to run on Win 8

There you go again. This would require a time machine. Think about what you are saying. Please stop this. I am just looking for help, not trolling. Why are you doing this?

It's the nature of Lithium-Ion batteries to fail suddenly and catastrophically. This is not like the days of NiCad and such. In my line of work I have cordless power tools (mainly cordless drills) with Lith-Ion batteries that fail in precisely this way when I abuse it. No warning, no slow decline, just a sudden stop. I'm not going to sue Lenovo over this.

It's the nature of Lithium-Ion batteries to fail suddenly and catastrophically

Why? Do you understand the inner workings i.e. the control circuitry and the cells etc?