Increasing Battery life?? or volt mod ??

Hi everybody,

I have an Inspiron 1520 /w an 8600M GT (in my sig for full specs) and it gets 3hrs 50minutes on my 9 cell doing reasonably intensive web browsing.

Is there anything I can do to boost my battery life aside from dropping the screen brightness less than 50%?

I was thinking about volt modding the CPU down....but how can I find what the stock vcore is for the T5250? It should be fine dropping the volts about 15% lower without any stability problems.

What about underclocking the 8600M GT? Would that make a significant difference?

 

Closing uneccessary programs/services and undervolting are your only choices left if youve fine tuned your power management settings already. Undervolting should give you an extra 20-30mins and a cooler running notebook.

8600m GT is dynamically underclocked already. It will only throttle up when you need the graphics power.

 

Well if my CPU usage is at 0-2% idling, there isn't anything to close lol.

Looks like undervolting will be only option. I wouldn't mind a cooler running notebook either way.

I'll find the pinouts and report back with any results.

 

Hmm i am only getting barely 2hrs out of my 6 cell battery for my XPS M1530 (T8100, 3gb ram, 320gb hdd) with wireless on and screen dimmed, just surfing and emails with word open.

Is this normal or is my battery under-performing? How many hours can i expect with a 9cell with the above usage patterns?

 

That seems normal for a 6 cell. I get about that on mine with a 6 cell.

 

ok phew...any 9 cell user can comment on battery life under actual usage conditions?