x301: New to me and is that really all the battery can do?

[wackyD]

So I impulse bought an x301 the other day.

It looks pretty good, just the 1.4 GHz and 64 GB SSD (mini PCI w/ 64 GB transflash to go in shortly), but with a battery pack with 85% of its original capacity, I maybe get 2 hours out of it, running Call of Duty for a load and some time on the web. That is pretty rough!

The battery is from 2011 so it could be reporting poorly or not well conditioned, but what kind of battery life does the rest of the world see?

I keep the brightness around 12, but I may just be spoiled by my big batteries on my x200 and x201.


Thanks!

Daniel

[FryPpy]

I maybe get 2 hours out of it, running Call of Duty for a load and some time on the web. That is pretty rough!

The battery is from 2011 so it could be reporting poorly or not well conditioned, but what kind of battery life does the rest of the world see?

First of all - what battery you have got? There is 2 types of battaries was made for X301
- 3cell Li-po - small and light
- 6cell Li-ion - big and heavy - but can store more energy.

Second - use power manager (Fn+F3) to estimate your battery characteristics - Full charge capacity vs Design capacity. So you can estimate wear level of battery.

[wackyD]

Maybe its the screen real estate?


After looking at my X201 6 cell, it is obvious in that the cylindrical 6 cell of the X201 has a substantially higher capacity than the prismatic 6 cell I have for the X301.

So I am thinking dialing down the screen brightness, and turning off WWAN and any other no essential radios is likely the way to go.

Any other advice?

I maybe get 2 hours out of it, running Call of Duty for a load and some time on the web. That is pretty rough!

The battery is from 2011 so it could be reporting poorly or not well conditioned, but what kind of battery life does the rest of the world see?

First of all - what battery you have got? There is 2 types of battaries was made for X301
- 3cell Li-po - small and light
- 6cell Li-ion - big and heavy - but can store more energy.

Second - use power manager (Fn+F3) to estimate your battery characteristics - Full charge capacity vs Design capacity. So you can estimate wear level of battery.

[theterminator93]

Really the best thing to do is open up Power Manager in advanced mode to see the actual capacity of your battery. As battery age and are used their actual capacity vs. their new/design capacity falls. For example a new 6 cell battery might hold 56 Wh of capacity, but after 3 years of moderate to heavy use it may only hold half that. The only way to tell is to check out your battery's stats in Power Manager.

Also check the settings for battery vs. AC. You can throttle the CPU back and change a few other settings to help battery life.

[wackyD]

Indeed, the advanced tab is how I know the cells have about 86% of their original capacity remaining, the 6 cell from the factory should have 43.2 Wh of capacity, I am at about 37 Wh or so (after a few run down cycles).

[ajkula66]

You'll never be able to match the runtime of the X20* batteries, but you should be seeing more time on the X301 battery nevertheless, I'd say at least 50%. Three hours seem reasonable with battery at 85% of design capacity...

Now, the old adage that "settings are everything" applies...

[fb1996]

You could try to undervolt the CPU.

[axur-delmeria]

You could try to undervolt the CPU.

That could help too. Since it's a Low Voltage Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU, the core voltage could be lowered quite a bit.

[ajkula66]

Since it's a Low Voltage Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU, the core voltage could be lowered quite a bit.

Which program would one use to accomplish this?

[axur-delmeria]

Which program would one use to accomplish this?

I don't have an X301, but in my X61 and X61T I use RMClock + Prime95 stress-test to find the lowest stable voltages, then enter those values on IBM_ECW.

I use RMClock because of its better UI, allowing me to adjust voltages and clock speeds quickly.
However, it's an awful program to launch at during Windows startup because it requires admin privileges.
I have to jump through a few hoops just to stop it from asking for an admin password every time it starts.

IBM_ECW's voltage/clock control UI is primitive in comparison (you have to enter the clock multipliers and voltages by hand), but it can be launched as a service and thus avoid RMClocks admin privilege requirement. It can also control the fan speed.

IBM_ECW also allows you to manually under/overclock the Intel GMA graphics, at least on my X61, X61T, and my aunt's X60. I don't know if it works on the X301 or X200 though.

[fb1996]

Which program would one use to accomplish this?

On my two X301 and on my X300, I used IBM_ECW, too.
As I noticed the fan to spin at a very high level for some seconds once an hour, I activated the "Disable all embedded controller related Features" function, because I use TPFanControl to control the fan.
Once I activated this feature, I never had this issue again.

[ajkula66]

@axur-delmeria and fb1996:

Thank you both for the guidance. I'll play a bit with those programs and report back.