My X220 is noticeably slower when plugged in at home

[hyde]

I see a noticeable difference in performance whenever my X220 is plugged in. The interesting thing is that I do not notice this sluggish performance when it is docked at the office.
I checked the performance center and compared the "Plugged In" and "On Battery" power profiles, and tried to duplicate the "on battery" to see if it can help, but I wonder if there is anywhere else I should check.

Any ideas?
Sometimes I get fed up, I actually unplug it once around %40-%50 charged.

[Atreides]

I see a noticeable difference in performance whenever my X220 is plugged in. The interesting thing is that I do not notice this sluggish performance when it is docked at the office.
I checked the performance center and compared the "Plugged In" and "On Battery" power profiles, and tried to duplicate the "on battery" to see if it can help, but I wonder if there is anywhere else I should check.

Any ideas?
Sometimes I get fed up, I actually unplug it once around %40-%50 charged.

Sounds like something is definitely messed up with the power profiles. What I'd recommend (what I've always done) is going into power manager and creating a new power plan. Set every setting for battery/AC exactly how you would like it, and use it as your standard profile.

Lenovo's default power management settings can be a little odd, but fortunately power manager gives you a ton of options.

[hyde]

I tried to duplicate the battery settings in the pluggin in section didn't really matter much, I will create one from scratch and try again tomorrow when I come back to plug it in. I just don't want to mess my current battery settings since it works flawlessly on battery.

[hyde]

I have a weird suspicion that it could actually be the AC Adapter itself, is that even possible? My Thinkpad is also being plugged (docked) in the office as well, but I do not see the sluggish performance that I notice when I plug it at home, now I really dread plugging it at all. I will try swapping power bricks and see if that makes a difference if it does that will be a really odd!

[Atreides]

I have a weird suspicion that it could actually be the AC Adapter itself, is that even possible? My Thinkpad is also being plugged (docked) in the office as well, but I do not see the sluggish performance that I notice when I plug it at home, now I really dread plugging it at all. I will try swapping power bricks and see if that makes a difference if it does that will be a really odd!

I suppose that's possible. I used to have a Dell that would work with a lot of other Dell chargers, but if one was a lower voltage it would scale everything way down to compensate.

I've seen power bricks fail, but it usually happens all at once. I'll be interested to see what the swap yields.

[hyde]

OK, it is definitely the power adapter/brick. I just brought my dock's adapter from office and I am now working on it, and it is night and day.

Here are the power adapters:
The one on the left is from the office and the one on the right is what I used at home.
Can anyone tell me which one is the original one that would come with thinkpad?

Edit: I am swapping them and I am not sure if plugging directly to office adapter did something but right now it is working fine with both bricks, this is really odd.. I noticed that the center of the adapter is "Signal" I wonder if that has something to do with the adapter if it is damaged, or maybe cord has some fraying somewhere I don't see, causing the connection issue, sending wrong signal?

[Kilowatt]

Hi, I was given a higher ampage adapter (90w as opposed to 65w) when I bought a T60p recently.

My X220 came supplied with the tiny 65W adapter

Looking closely at your photos, the left one 90w shows output 4.5A, the right one 65w shows output 3.25A, I think this is the difference.

Good luck

[GomJabbar]

Sometime back I believe I read a bug regarding these power supplies. I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: Eric posted in the last thread below that this issue was fixed with a BIOS update. [Without reading too much, I believe this is your issue.]
http://208.74.204.134/t5/X-Series-Think ... d-p/428879

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... issue.html

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=103600

[petko8680]

EDIT: Eric posted in the last thread below that this issue was fixed with a BIOS update. [Without reading too much, I believe this is your issue.]
...

By BIOS Update you mean actual bios update using lenovo bios update software or disabling the speedstep and/or power management? cheers

[hyde]

According to this there is a new BIOS that was just released last week

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... D=DS018805

I thought SystemUpdate would notify me of these, but I have not gotten any information until I manually ran it today.
I guess because system update needed to be updated! Anyway, I will certainly try this new BIOS tonight. I have noticed that issue is more apparent when there is less than %50 battery and plugged. It is really funny sometimes the system flies and does not skip a beat, but sometimes it just crawls to almost a standstill whenever I try to open outlook or a heavy excel sheet. This never happens when it is on battery or docked at work.

[petko8680]

Well, will give it a try now. Hope it will helps. Right now machine is running on battery quite well, but HDD light is on al the time, which i think is not right...

P.S. Is there any chance(even smallest one) that BIOS update will make things worse?

P.S.2 As mentioned above- is following normal- set it up to start charging when battery goes below 65% and stop when reaches 95%. But between those intervals, battery is neither charging nor discharging. It says "plugged in, not charging", and if battery level is 68% it's stays like that. So, is this how it should be?

[EOMtp]

... So, is this how it should be?

Yes, precisely like that.