Thinkpads Forum

For general office work -- Internet, email, word-processing, spreadsheets -- which will deliver longer battery life: the X61s, or the X60s?

I'm sorely tempted to grab an X61s tonight while current sale pricing is still active. But if the X60s will last longer on battery, then I might grab one from eBay instead.

And what about the X41? Better or worse than X60 series?

my x40 pushed 7 hours when it was new.

my x61s pushes 10 hours on the 8 cell.


the x60s DOES use less power, but not enough to be worth it vs the performance of the x61s.

blackomegax wrote:my x40 pushed 7 hours when it was new.

my x61s pushes 10 hours on the 8 cell.


the x60s DOES use less power, but not enough to be worth it vs the performance of the x61s.

Really? You can achieve 10 hours on the X61s with the 8 cell? All the reviews said they can only achieve about 6.5 hours.

yeah. ill take a screenshot of the battery meter in class tonight.


/and thusly, linkage.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9701/11hourlw1.jpg

//radio switch off.

///8 hours with wifi and BT at 'max performance' settings.

tallshorty wrote: Really? You can achieve 10 hours on the X61s with the 8 cell? All the reviews said they can only achieve about 6.5 hours.

Well, it highly depends on what you're doing, of course. If you're running a CAD/CAM package with the CPU set on high and screen brightness at 15, you'd get 5 if you're lucky.

On the other hand, setting everything to "low", and turning off WiFi allows me to go for 8 hours even with a power hungry T7500.

Also keep in mind these times are just thrown out for comparison. You NEVER want to run lithium ions down to the lowest level all the time. While there're regulation circuits to prevent immediate permanent damage, running the cells to <10% repeatedly will severely reduce lifespan.

I keep my battery between 35% and 95% all the time for optimum life.

tallshorty wrote:Really? You can achieve 10 hours on the X61s with the 8 cell? All the reviews said they can only achieve about 6.5 hours.

I had an X60s and its 90%-capacity 8-cell battery gave 9 hours. That was with the display at the dimmest, Office documents, and occasional WiFi. A brand new battery would have given me 10 hours.

blackomegax wrote:yeah. ill take a screenshot of the battery meter in class tonight.


/and thusly, linkage.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9701/11hourlw1.jpg

//radio switch off.

///8 hours with wifi and BT at 'max performance' settings.

It's a bug. Your battery capacity: ~75Wh and current power usage is ~9W --> 75Wh / 9W = 8,33 hours. In practice you can't get over 9 hours usage times as far as I know. I can get something ~8W consumption as minimum, but it requires that hard-drive is off and all battery savings are on. Also you should remember that hard drive will turn on everytime when OS or programs need some information from disk (unless it is in cache). Hard-drive will suck power 2-5 watts depending what it is doing. In real life you you might get max 8,5h battery life. To get 11 hour battery run you have to keep battery usage under 6,8 watts which is not possible (as far as I know =) ).

BTW: You can save 1-2 watt to connecting your X61s on external display and turning off your laptop LCD.

Lumikko wrote: BTW: You can save 1-2 watt to connecting your X61s on external display and turning off your laptop LCD.

Wouldn't it be more effective to just plug in the computer?

Santa Rosa is a tad bit less power hungry mainly due to its SuperLFM mode. Thus x61s runs a bit longer than x60s on low load.

I can use my 60s a whole work day (8 -10hrs) with out a charge... now that includes closing the lid or letting it go to sleep when its idle (going to lunch or during meetings).. So its not ON the whole day, but its on a good part of it... My 41 was good but it definitley wasnt as good as the 60s... I was considering a x300 but from what I am reading the battery life isnt quite as good..

Not mentioned here thus far, but of course your selection of OS will determine final battery performance.



SJS

stronach wrote:Not mentioned here thus far, but of course your selection of OS will determine final battery performance.



SJS

Which OS offers the best battery life? XP or Vista?

JonathanGennick, I'm glad that you asked this question becaus that's what bothers me too!

I was going to buy me an X series laptop, and mobility is my top priority. In this regard I'm in sheer disappointment with the state of affairs in the notebook industry (why do they all keep making "portable" computers that work so little? They ain't portable this way!) So my attention gradually shifted from X31 to X40 to X60s and X61s. I'm going to use XP till it drops dead, turn all systems settings for perfomance (that's nearly how I use desktop computers anyway) and down X300 is a great laptop in many ways but for me it has some drawbacks too, so I'm not buying it. I'm leaning towards X60s, mainly because from what I heard X61s has weaker battery life and also not much more perfomance.

Looking at this review from geek.com that compares X61s with X60s, I see that X61s lasted 2 hours less in their testing. And it also shows less perfomance in 3Dmark 2001! If I would run some 3D apps on machine like this, they would likely be some old ones, that utilize only the older graphics features so I think 3Dmark 2001 is perfectly relevant in this case. This would be enough to turn me off from X61s.

All this pushes me to the conclusion that X61s plain sucks compared to X60s. Did I overlook something? Maybe under different angle it will shine?

The only real benefit of X61s compared to X60s is the ability to run 64 bit software.
If you don't need 64 bit OS, X60s will do you more than good. Less power consumption, lower heat output, and better battery life. It is probably a Thinkpad with the best battery life that Lenovo has ever made.
By the time 64 bit OS becomes main stream, you probably would want to buy a new laptop anyway.

tallshorty wrote:

stronach wrote:Not mentioned here thus far, but of course your selection of OS will determine final battery performance.



SJS

Which OS offers the best battery life? XP or Vista?

XP offers the best battery life from my experience by at least 10% to 15% in most cases.

stronach wrote:

tallshorty wrote: Which OS offers the best battery life? XP or Vista?

XP offers the best battery life from my experience by at least 10% to 15% in most cases.

I wouldn't sign this...

x60s Power Manager on XP, Wattage 6,44W

x60s Power Manager on Vista, Wattage 7W

By the way, only on Vista the harddrive keeps switched off when idle. On XP this never happens due the svhost bug...

www.dj-tecgen.com wrote: x60s Power Manager on XP, Wattage 6,44W

x60s Power Manager on Vista, Wattage 7W

Do you really get times like this on your X60s? Looks great!

www.dj-tecgen.com wrote:x60s + 3GB RAM + hybrid harddrive + vista = now complete silent

Ah. the hybrid harddrive - it could be nice solution till you are ready to go full solid state.
Does the hybrid technology work fine for you? It works only with Vista, right?

dj-tecgen, where does one buy a hybrid hard drive? Or are you talking about ready-boost?

Nickolai wrote:

www.dj-tecgen.com wrote: x60s Power Manager on XP, Wattage 6,44W

x60s Power Manager on Vista, Wattage 7W

Do you really get times like this on your X60s? Looks great!

www.dj-tecgen.com wrote:x60s + 3GB RAM + hybrid harddrive + vista = now complete silent

Ah. the hybrid harddrive - it could be nice solution till you are ready to go full solid state.

Does the hybrid technology work fine for you? It works only with Vista, right?

> Do you really get times like this on your X60s? Looks great!

The most power consumes wireless lan. When my WLAN is switched off and the display and CPU run on their lowest settings, for instance while reading an ebook in bed, I get these values.

The hybrid harddrive helps Vista and some OS selected applications, like Outlook, to startup faster. When the drive is in idle state, some of the read/write accesses are written in the flash instead to the drive. You may know that on XP the svhost writes almost every 2-5 sec. to the harddrive. Nobody knows why. This behaviour avoid the harddrive to spin down and with a spinning harddrive your notebook creates more noise and consumes more power. Since the same harddrive without flash cost around 3Euro less, I chose the hybrid drive. Is a Samsung HM16HJI 160GB drive.

>Does the hybrid technology work fine for you? It works only with Vista, right?

Yes only with Vista and for me its working fine. But, I don't know if this really depends on the hybrid drive, sometimes the notebook appear to hang for around 10-20s and after the time the harddisk spins up and everything works fine. Maybe this hybrid technology is not full perfect yet. Anyway, it helps me getting an absolute complete silent notebook while reading ebooks

>where does one buy a hybrid hard drive? Or are you talking about ready-boost?

Here in Germany, I purchased the Samsung HM16HJI 160GB incl. 256MB flash for 54 Euro from the cheapest selling online shop.

And no, I'm not talking about ReadyBoost the advantage of hybrid harddrives is NV Cache.

ppt presentation from MS

The most power consumes wireless lan

Can you tell the model of your wireless lan? How much power does it consume?

Yes only with Vista and for me its working fine. But, I don't know if this really depends on the hybrid drive, sometimes the notebook appear to hang for around 10-20s and after the time the harddisk spins up and everything works fine.

That should be because the hard disk spun down. It takes time to spin up. That's why I think of upgrading to SSD at some point.

JonathanGennick wrote:For general office work -- Internet, email, word-processing, spreadsheets -- which will deliver longer battery life: the X61s, or the X60s?

And what about the X41? Better or worse than X60 series?

JonathanGennick, I don't have first-hand experience with ThinkPads, but you can take a look at a list of links to reviews that I compiled here. I.e. check out the CNET reviews: they have used the same testing method (BAPCo MobileMark 2002 battery life in minutes) for X30 through X60s and it clearly shows that X40/X41 is an improvement over previous models, but X60s is better still. For X61s they switched their testing method to entirely another one* so I can't say for sure, but this review from geek.com shows that X61s is worse for battery life under identical testing conditions.

* Note: I kind of understand the rationale behind this switch. Being hardcore computer users as they are, even they at one point realised that normal users no more hack their FORTRAN programs on their laptops, they are more likely to do some fun things like watch movies. But I want to hack my FORTRAN programs, so I need to seek other tests that compare laptops under light usage. Of course, I think that it's ridiculous - I need computer that works long hours under any usage, but that just seems to be impossible with the current technology.

Can you tell the model of your wireless lan? How much power does it consume?

The system manager shows an "Intel(R) Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection" card. I guess WLAN takes between 4 and 8 additional watts. Actually my power manager shows an overall wattage between 9,5 and 12watt. As usual is my screen at the lowest brightness level and WLAN power settings are at highest level.

That should be because the hard disk spun down. It takes time to spin up. That's why I think of upgrading to SSD at some point.

Yes, maybe I upgrade to SSD in future as well, but surely not for todays prices.

The system manager shows an "Intel(R) Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection" card. I guess WLAN takes between 4 and 8 additional watts. Actually my power manager shows an overall wattage between 9,5 and 12watt. As usual is my screen at the lowest brightness level and WLAN power settings are at highest level.

Perhaps of interest that turning off the switch and unloading modules for Intel's 4965ABGN only saves 1-1.5w vs stock (power_level/savings disabled) per Powertop on my x61s running Linux 2.6.24-git-SMP.