Thinkpads Forum

Hi Guys,

When I swap out the bay battery, should I disable the optical drive in the bios first, or would the X300 be smart enough to know that there is no optical drive?

Cheers,
David

well from what i saw with the X300, it's not a quick removeable thing like on the T/R/Z series. You have to remove a screw and slide it out then slide in the battery. Windows however would recognise upon waking up and "pinging" all HIDs that are supposed to be present. if it doesn't reply then i guess it just gets turned off and disappears.

there's no need to disable it in the BIOS.   i have both the optical drive and bay battery and swapping between them is painless.   if i'm in windows and want to remove the optical drive without restarting then i stop the device, remove it, and plug in the battery.   simple.

Thanks guys.

Yes just swapped it over and it's painless.

How much battery time does the bay battery add to the 6C main battery? In minutes/hours or percentage, just to get a feeling if buying bay battery is "smart"...

Thanks

whatever you're getting out of the 6c battery, assume you'll add approximately 50% more life to that number.   ie; if you get 4 hours of run time on the 6c then you'll get 6 hours with it and the bay battery.

That's more than I expected. Thanks.

In Aus the x300 comes standard with a 3 cell battery, and that gives me 2.5hr of use.

I've been using the 3cell + 3cell bay battery and get a realistic 4hr out of it. Good enough for on call work.

I get about 3,5 from 6C, which is still acceptable for such a light notebook... though I was hoping to get about 4-5.

jamess wrote:I get about 3,5 from 6C, which is still acceptable for such a light notebook... though I was hoping to get about 4-5.

wow only 3.5? I read that the 6C will last 8-10 hours. do you do a lot of cpu-intensive stuff on battery?

Definitely not! I do office work more or less and firefox with a dozen tabs open. I have offline sync time to time and sidebar with to-do and clock on it. That's about it. I don't have AV software or anything "bigger" running in the background. Yes, 3,5 - 4h is what i get from a 6C battery with brightness 4 bars down from max. Oh and I run Vista B32, 3GB ram, if that explains it.

But most certainly I don't get 8-10h and I don't believe honestly, that there is anyone who gets that amount of time on a single 6C battery. Maybe on WinXP...

I've never EVER seen any battery last as long as any manufacturer says it will, be it Lenovo, Sony, Apple or otherwise. You can almost always discount those claims by a minimum of 25%, most of the time more than that. If you want to run a laptop they way they test to determine battery life, they probably boot into DOS with a darkened screen and wait for it to shut off.

Booting into windows, with fifty or more background processes running, add to that LCD backlight at full tilt, CPU at best performance, DVD and HDD running, Wireless connected, video playback and you've just cut the battery runtime estimate in half or more.

Much like the EPA mileage ratings on cars and trucks that tell you that you are going to get 20 miles to the gallon city, and you end up with more like 14 or 15 MPG's. You simply never achieve the MPG's the government claims you are supposed to. They provide the famous disclaimer "Your Mileage May Vary" YMMV.

Unfortunately, with no industry standard or regulations on battery life claims, it is difficult to ascertain what is true or what is hype. Bottom line, ask other users or try for yourself. YMMV!!

Pharfignewton wrote:In Aus the x300 comes standard with a 3 cell battery, and that gives me 2.5hr of use.

What power settings are you using? I get only about 1 to 1.5 hrs with the 3 cell...
Wondering whether to buy a 6 cell or bay battery....
Mainly need battery power when jumping into meetings

I tried to look at the battery life between XP vs. Vista.

If the ACPI battery drain numbers are to be believe, then Vista usese about 30% less battery. I just fired up RMClock and looked at the battery drain numbers.

On XP, with the screen at full brightness and WLAN on, the system draws about 13 to 14W. In Vista, this draws about 10W. I'd be curious if other people's numbers are in line with this.

vbap wrote:

Pharfignewton wrote:In Aus the x300 comes standard with a 3 cell battery, and that gives me 2.5hr of use.

What power settings are you using? I get only about 1 to 1.5 hrs with the 3 cell...
Wondering whether to buy a 6 cell or bay battery....
Mainly need battery power when jumping into meetings

When on batttery I have brightness to 6 bars, and the WLAN or WWAN is always on. Mind you I primarily use my laptop to VPN then RDP into my work PC, and also use firefox, so not that cpu intensive.