T410/T420 - ultrabay battery and discrete graphic questions

[ojciec]

I'm thinking about buying an ultrabay battery to my ThinkPad T410 (soon i'll be swapping to T420 with Nvidia graphic) and i read lot of posts on many forums and i'm a bit affraid of battery life, since i've discovered that at first TP uses Ultrabay battery and discharge it to 0%.
All posts that i found were written before 2011.

So, my question is: something change since then? Is there now any possibility to choose order of discharging and/or point of switching to other battery? I know, that i can just pull the battery out manually but i'd rather auto-swapping.

Also, i have additional question: i have T410 with NVS M3100 256MB. Is the 512MB version equipped with Optimus Technology (i want it to manually/automaticly switch on slower graphic to increase battery life).

Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language.

[ojciec]

Anyone?

[jayton4]

Bad news. The T410 does not support ultrabay battery.
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd024289

Your only option for a secondary battery is the slice battery:
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd024286

Also, I have a T410 w/ Nvidia 3100M 512MB, and in my opinion Optimus sucks. Intel-only gives noticeably better battery life than Optimus. Nvidia-only gives better performance than Optimus. So Optimus sucks at both tasks it was designed for.

[ojciec]

Bad news. The T410 does not support ultrabay battery.

Oh, now i see - it support only T410s... Slice battery in Poland is unfortunetly rare and very expensive - new costs around 50% of used T410 with 9-cell battery...

So my only hope is to buy T420 with NVIDIA - i've read that it's up to 5 hours of internet using via WiFi.

And my last question - ALL T410 with 512MB NVIDIA have Optimus or only selected units?

[bit_twiddler]

I bought a used slice battery for my T420 and was fortunate to get one in good shape.
One thing to look for is the date of manufacture, since these batteries do not have
a long shelf life. Another option is to buy the slice battery for the T430, as they
are backwards compatible.

I get about 12-16 hours with integrated graphics, depending upon how hard I push
the machine. I'm not sure what one would get with Optimus (or Bumblebee, which is
the Linux equivalent). If Optimus is running correctly, then you might get nearly
the same battery life as with integrated graphics, depending upon how much
you are using the Nvidia chip.

I'd expect that you would get better battery life in general with a T420 than with
a T410, just because the 2nd generation Core processors were more power efficient.

If you look on Ebay, I'm sure that you'll find something in Europe. You might consider
asking the seller to report what remaining capacity the battery has, using Power Manager
or TLP (if he/she has Linux.)

Having a good return policy on a new or used battery is a good idea. If you can get that,
then a slice battery is an excellent option.

[ajkula66]

And my last question - ALL T410 with 512MB NVIDIA have Optimus or only selected units?

My understanding - which may be incorrect - is that none of the T410 units offer Optimus support.

[rkawakami]

According to the May 2014 ltwbook, at least two models offered Optimus: 2522-88U and 2518-AJU.

[jayton4]

My 2518X01 has Optimus. The three choices I have in the BIOS are Integrated, Dedicated, or Optimus.