T400s Battery Life on Windows 7, Vista and Linux (FC11)

[sentiono]

I just purchased T400s 2823-RZ8.
I just made comparison on Battery life on Windows Vista Business edition (pre-installed), Windows 7 (upgrade option) and Linux Fedora Core 11 - all standard and default settings without tweaking.
Running web browsing with wireless on, spreadsheet and word processing.
Vista Business: 3 hrs 30 mins
Windows 7: 4 hrs 15 mins
Linux Fedora Core 11: 2 hrs 45 mins

I want to know what made so much different on battery life? Does anyone have similiar experience on this? I would like to run Linux but if the battery life is so much different, that'd be bad. Unless someone can point me how to prolong battery life on Linux.

Thanks and hope someone can help me.

[ThinkRob]

I want to know what made so much different on battery life? Does anyone have similiar experience on this? I would like to run Linux but if the battery life is so much different, that'd be bad. Unless someone can point me how to prolong battery life on Linux.

Take a look at ThinkWiki's pages on power consumption.

In my experience (with my X60s, X61s, X200s, and X40), most distributions do a fairly poor job battery-wise in their default configuration. With a couple minutes of tweaking, however, it is quite possible to get equal longevity under Linux.

My X200s, for example, can easily hit 8 hours of actual usage on the 6-cell battery whilst running Debian.

[Volker]

1) Use the current Fedora 12 instead of 11. Lots of graphics driver updates for the Intel graphics.

2) Install and run powertop.