-- T43p -- short battery life with a new battery?

[windv]

Hi guys,

I have an t43p and i just bought a new 9 cell battery
I also got the T43p just recently and the old battery was dead, so i have no experience with thinkpads battery life span.
Everywhere i read, people are saying this kind of batteries should last up to 4 or 5h or something...and i am counting on that a lot for how i use my laptop.
When my new one is fully charged and the computer runs on minimum preferences, CPU at 800Mh with the ATI power play turned on and the GPU running at 104\120 MHz i still don´t get more than arround 3h of life...
I bought the battery from ebay and its a 7800mAh one, it should have even longer life than the original battery (which i read is about 4-5hours)...or at least that's what i read in the description.

I'm just not sure if that's normal, if the battery is not OK, a fake or something..or if my laptop consumes somehow too much energy. And even though it had to be a 7800mAh battery in the power manager i see:

- Full charge capacity - 72,21Wh
- Design capacity - 84,24
well now are those 72,21Wh the same as 7200mAh? And is it normal the difference between the Design and used capacity to be so big?Does that matter actually?

here are some other details:
- Current - 1,63A
- Voltage - 11,78 V
- Wattage - 25.60 W
- Temp - 34 C
- Cycle count 3
- Manufacturer - SANYO
- Manufacture date -2009-02-19


Thanks in advance. It would help even if you share your experience with such batteries and how were they.

[dr_st]

Since there were never original 7800mAh batteries for T43 (as far as I know), I assume this is a compatible, rather than genuine IBM/Lenovo. Although, maybe they started releasing these higher capacity batteries after the T43 production ceased? The fact that the power manager detects all the data sure makes it look like a Lenovo original, however voltage seems off (original Lenovo batteries are 10.8V), the capacity seems way low compared to design, for a new battery with only 3 cycles, so my guess it's not genuine.

The wattage (25.60W) seems higher than I would expect from a T43p at idle, with the CPU and GPU downclocked. Way higher.

[windv]

thanks for the fast reply
yes, this is not an original IBM battery, its a compatible(although it fits better than the original one) and it is supposed to have all the qualities of the original batteries.
Do you think its because of the high wattage that the battery last shorter. What can be causing this high power use?
Actually at the time the consumption was 25W there was a USB Wireless Stick connected with a few downloads running. when i disconnected it the PowerManager showed 16W for a few seconds then jumped back shortly again for a short time to 24W and now stays around 19W. Do you think it could be the wireless stick that could have used so much Watts?
Also is a writing HDD (by downloading with around 500kb) taking a lot more of energy than in normal use...

ps

as i connected the wifi stick again to send the massage the Wattage went up to 30-33W. Are those peak values normal at down-clocked system, or should i be looking for the problem not with the battery but with the hardware somewhere....
How much does the fan consumes if it runs all the time. I normally use TPFancontrol, but now i've swithced it to Default mode to keep the temps lower.

[ajkula66]

Generic batteries are rarely a good choice in my experience.

On a brand new genuine 9-cell, my T43p wasn't getting more than 3.5 hours with wireless on and screen fully lit.

Hope this helps.

[sktn77a]

Well, your "New" battery has only 85% of the capacity it should have. Which means you are only getting 85% of the run time it should be giving. Not that much different, but you paid for 100%!

For what its worth, I got about 2 hours from a new 6 cell and 3 hours from a new 9 cell on my 15", 2GHz, 2GB RAM 7200rpm HDD, ATI9600GPU T42 (surfing, word processing, etc). DVD playing cuts down on those times even more. But I've learned that aftermarket batteries (including "energizer") are NOT equivalent to IBM/Lenovo/Toshiba/HP batteries. Their longevity is MUCH worse than the name brand. And the warranties are pretty much worthless as the companies are either out of business or find some way to get out of replacing them.

[andykrej]

I think you should check up on that wattage. My T42 would run 5 hrs on a 6-cell, so yours should theoretically be much more than that. Try to stop all programs, remove all usb devices (also the dvd drive), switch off the wireless and turn screen to lowest brigthness. At this point wattage should be 7-8 watts ( maybe a bit more on a T43). If this isn't the case, you might have a background process gone wild that makes the CPU work intesively.

The math works this way: VxA=W, so a 7800mAh battery at 10.8 A gives 84.24 Wh. 72.21 Wh divided by 10.8 V gives 6686 mAh. So you haven't received the promised capacity. I would complain about that. Where did you order the battery?

[FrankL]

I think you should check up on that wattage. My T42 would run 5 hrs on a 6-cell, so yours should theoretically be much more than that. Try to stop all programs, remove all usb devices (also the dvd drive), switch off the wireless and turn screen to lowest brigthness. At this point wattage should be 7-8 watts ( maybe a bit more on a T43). If this isn't the case, you might have a background process gone wild that makes the CPU work intesively.

The math works this way: VxA=W, so a 7800mAh battery at 10.8 A gives 84.24 Wh. 72.21 Wh divided by 10.8 V gives 6686 mAh. So you haven't received the promised capacity. I would complain about that. Where did you order the battery?

I've never seen my T43 (ATI X300, SXGA+ Flexview) eat less than ~11 Watts. Maybe non-flexview 14" models will require even less, but nowhere near 7-8 Watts unfortunately. For a T43p I'd guess 13-15 Watts should be achievable.

Bluetooth and WLAN eat quite a lot of juice. Disable them whenever not needed. Also, make sure that you use an OS that preloads programs into the RAM (MS Visa/7 superfetch). It will prevent disk access, maybe even allowing spindown? that should save additional power especially with a 7200rpm drive.

[Binh]

Something is wrong with your battery. From your data we have:
Current: 1.6A
Voltage: 11.8V
Wattage: 25W
As we can see, the multiplication Current x Voltage is much lower that the wattage.

anyway, I'm sure that you have a fake chinese battery what is no good. I have a bad experience with this type of product for my old Compaq N410C.