SURVEY: T-Series Battery Life

[Colonel O'Neill]

I've moved this thread over to Lenovo Forums:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-a ... d-p/307132

Please post over there; this thread will not longer be included when compiling the data.





















Hello everyone,

I am conducting a survey (more like research) in order to find a correlation between components (software and hardware) and battery life. I am doing this because I have two friends with identically configured T510's with vastly differing battery lives. In addition, my own T400 doesn't quite meet the tabook ratings for battery life. But beyond that, this information will benefit those who already own a ThinkPad (how to improve their battery runtimes) and prospective ThinkPad owners (how to pick the most power efficient components). Thus I am asking for a few minutes of your time for the following information as much as possible:

Code: Select all

Model:
CPU:
GPU (specify switchability):
HDD (including manufacturer):
RAM configuration:
Wireless Adapter:
Bluetooth:
WWAN:
Display (manufacturer if convenient):
Battery (# of cells and % wear):
Advertised Battery Life (tabook, optional):
Actual Battery Runtime*:
Usual Battery Display Brightness:

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded):	
Firewall/Antivirus Solution:
Browser(s):

Please refrain from commenting on other people's posts on this thread for the sake of tidiness.

I am primarily interested in T-Series as the W-Series generally lives with the expectation of lower battery life, and the X-Series with higher battery life, but post anyway.

Thank you in advance for your participation. I will post tallied results at the end of the year. Hopefully enough people will have chimed in.

Happy ThinkPadding!

* Actual battery life will be defined as the runtime under normal office conditions/light web browsing/note taking/etc. It's not very rigorous, but it's a tradeoff between statistical accuracy and convenience. OPTIONAL: Extrapolations of a full battery runtime (in case you use charging thresholds) can be done using the formula Δt/Δ%, where Δt is the runtime to drain Δ%, where Δ% ie expressed as a decimal value between 0 and 1.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Model: T400 (2764-CTO)
CPU: P8700
GPU (specify switchability): ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 (switchable)
HDD (including manufacturer): 320GB Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT
RAM configuration: 2x2GB DDR3 DIMM
Wireless Adapter: Intel Centrino 5300
Bluetooth: Yes
WWAN: No
Display (manufacturer if convenient): 1440x900 LED (Samsung)
Battery (# of cells and % wear): 6-cell (6% wear)
Advertised Battery Life (tabook): 6.5 hours
Actual Battery Runtime*: 3.5 hours
Usual Battery Display Brightness: 0-2

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded): Windows 7 x86 RTM
Firewall/Antivirus Solution: Kaspersky 2011
Browser(s): Minefield pre-release

[Colonel O'Neill]

Model: T510
CPU: i5-540M
GPU (specify switchability): NVidia NVS3100 (non-Optimus)
HDD (including manufacturer): 500GB Hitachi TravelStar 7k500
RAM configuration: 2x2GB DDR3 DIMM
Wireless Adapter: Intel Centrino 6300
Bluetooth: No
WWAN: No
Display (manufacturer if convenient): 1600x900 LED
Battery (# of cells and % wear): 9-cell (0% wear)
Advertised Battery Life (tabook): 7.8 hours
Actual Battery Runtime*: 7.5 hours
Usual Battery Display Brightness: 3-4 (usually 4)

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded): Windows 7 x86 preload
Firewall/Antivirus Solution: Kaspersky 2010
Browser(s): Chrome

[Colonel O'Neill]

Model: T510
CPU: i5-540M
GPU (specify switchability): NVidia NVS3100 (non-Optimus)
HDD (including manufacturer): 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4
RAM configuration: 2x2GB DDR3 DIMM
Wireless Adapter: Intel Centrino 6300
Bluetooth: Yes
WWAN: No
Display (manufacturer if convenient): 1600x900 LED
Battery (# of cells and % wear): 6-cell (5% wear)
Advertised Battery Life (tabook): 4.7 hours
Actual Battery Runtime*: 2 hours
Usual Battery Display Brightness: 6

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded): Windows 7 x64 preload
Firewall/Antivirus Solution: Kaspersky 2010
Browser(s): Chrome

[Navck]

Model: T410 2516-CTO
CPU: i7-620m
GPU (specify switchability): NVS3100m no switching,
HDD (including manufacturer): Hitachi 7K320-320
RAM configuration: 2x2GB w/ one aftermarket module
Wireless Adapter: 6300, transmit set to power saving on battery but it seems to transmit at full power according to the Intel toolbox (32mW)
Bluetooth: Yes, soft off state.
WWAN: Gobi 2000 unit, software switch off state, disabled in device manager.
Display (manufacturer if convenient): WXGA+ LED, I want to say its a LG Phillips panel.
Battery (# of cells): 9 cell, ~ 1% wear maybe?
Advertised Battery Life (tabook): 8.3 hours
Actual Battery Runtime*: 7-9 hours depending on situation on average, 5 hours under fairly heavy CPU load + Speedstep (Ex: Using dBPA in the field to convert someone's MP3 player from CBR MP3s to VBR MP3s)
Usual Battery Display Brightness: Unlit Indoors: 0-3/15; Indoors w/ Lighting: 4-7/15; Indoors w/ large windows and midday-noon: 8-10/15

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded): Stripped down services/software Lenovo preload Win7-32 Ultimate.
Firewall/Antivirus Solution: Avira, disabled when on battery or when I feel the system is safe
Browser(s): IE8 w/ IE7 Pro + Adblocking features, FF3.6 w/ Adblock

[Colonel O'Neill]

Model: T410
CPU: i5-540M
GPU (specify switchability): NVS3100M (non-Optimus)
HDD (including manufacturer): 320GB 7200RPM Seagate
RAM configuration: 2x2GB
Wireless Adapter: Intel Centrino 6200
Bluetooth: No
WWAN: No
Display (manufacturer if convenient): 1440x900 LED
Battery (# of cells and % wear): 9-cells, 5% wear
Advertised Battery Life (tabook): 8.3 hours
Actual Battery Runtime*: 4.5 hours
Usual Battery Display Brightness: 11

Primary OS (x86 or x64 and SP and if is preloaded): Windows 7 (64-bit) Preload
Firewall/Antivirus Solution: Avira
Browser(s): Chrome

[bananaman]

David Pogue of the New York Times published a nice commentary last year about why advertised runtimes bear little relationship to reality:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/techn ... pogue.html

Apple have since abandoned the industry standard runtime tests and developed their own more realistic tests. I personally hope the whole industry gets this sorted out!

The information you are collecting is interesting, but it doesn't capture the wide variation in the way we all USE our systems.

[Colonel O'Neill]

I know this isn't rigorous by any means, but it's an attempt. Regardless of whether the tabook ratings are accurate or not, I'm trying to figure out why in the world one of the T510's I posted gets 50min per cell and the other gets 20min per cell.

I also know that I said to avoid commenting in this thread