My T410 Is Using 18-23W When Idle

Hi all,

This is continuation of a past thread I created, however I felt the need to create this one as I feel the previous did not have an appropriate title and did not get to this issue until further into the thread.

My T410 ThinkPad is just over a month old, 2 weeks ago I noticed the power usage (according to Power Manager 3.25) and posted it in a thread asking how to extend my battery life, which was notably shorter compared to other T410 owners with identical specifications. Because this is my first laptop, 20-23W did not seem large to me, but I was told it was very excessive based on my specifications and power plan.

What is wrong, and how do I lower this? Windows 7 is only reporting 5:15 on a 95% charge (9 Cell battery).

Here are my specifications;
Lenovo ThinkPad T410 2516CTO
Core i5 520M
4GB DDR3
500GB 7200.1
Intel Ultimate-N 6300
WXGA+
Integrated Graphics




Any and all help is appreciated, I am getting desperate to get my power usage down to a reasonable level for an integrated graphics machine, and my battery life up.

 

How many watts if you set it to Maximum Battery Life?

 

17-20W, idle. My power plan is pretty much the same as the Maximum Battery Life plan.

 

What are the differences? Also, make sure that cooling is set to passive, but only on battery mode, in AC set to Active.

 

Slightly higher screen brightness on the custom plan, and Aero enabled (looks like it wasn't on Max Battery). Less than a full "notch" in Power Manager, I used the slider in Windows Power Settings to adjust it just a little brighter than a single notch in Power Manager.

That is exactly how my cooling setting are set.

 

Unsolved/Bump

 

We have virtually identical systems. I've noticed in the power manager that while in high performance mode, at idle, I get roughly what you're getting. I've never tweaked the power profile, but I do recall once that I set the slider all the way to the right and it didn't give me much more of a power savings.
If I didn't know better I'd say yours is within normal range.

 

See, if I got ~5 hours on a maximum performance setting I'd be okay with that, but I'm getting this on very minimal settings, almost identical to Maximum Battery Life.

 

Bump (10 Chars)

 

You could have processes that are active and using the CPU or activity that uses the hard disk. With wireless on and the optical drive auto shut-off, I would expect around 10 watts or less if the computer is just sitting doing nothing. Those watts have to be going towards something.

 

Here's a screen shot of Process Explorer. Now I realize there is increased strain on the system when playing videos, normally VLC is not running on battery.



As you can see, nothing abnormal taking excessive CPU usage that would drain the battery. Explorer is leading in CPU usage with 4.05%. Keep in mind the processor is on the "Lowest" speed on the power plan, in Power Manager.

 

I noticed you have searchindexer running, that can drain your battery. It will scan your HD to build an index file to make searches faster. I always disable that on laptops, at least while mobile.

 

Search indexer will access your hard drive and use CPU cycles. The indexer is very active if you have just installed windows or begun using the system. You could leave your computer plugged in for a few hours idle and then it would finish indexing. Also, I wonder what interrupts is.

All those add up to a CPU usage of 19%. I've found that when unplugged, having anything in the background that always uses the CPU shortens battery life. But my experience is that power consumption goes up only by a few watts. I have a T400 by the way. It may be that the 520M uses more power when active or it may be something else or both reasons are contributing.

 

See, that doesn't make sense to me because I doubt every other user who reports ~8 hours of battery life with Wifi has disabled indexing. It only runs when idle as well.

I've noticed a glitch that could be the problem. At times the screen will slowly get darker, then get brighter, and the quality of the image will get notably worse, it degrades. Then after about a minute it turns back to normal.

- I have Adaptive Brightness off, and the service is disabled.
- I have turned off the power saving in the Intel CP.

Could this be it?

 

^^^^ Bump.

 

Bump !!!!!!!

 

Final bump for a while. Probably going to have to send this in.

 

I wonder if you re-format your computer and do a fresh install if that would solve the problem.

 

I think I'm going to try that today.

 

My T510 when totally idle is at about 13 watts, and when under use (web browsing) it bounces between 16 and 22 watts. Not sure if that helps anything, just giving another data point. My specs: Intel I540, nvs3100 video card, 4 gigs of ram, FHD screen. Your usage does seem a tad high.

Usually I end up around 5:30-6 hours of run time. I think that's pretty good for having the Nvidia card.

 

Unless your computer is in sleep or hibernation mode, I really think you are within specs agentfourtyseven. I really wouldn't worry about it. A side note though, Lenovo includes A LOT of junkware with their systems. I noticed that after I totally cleaned up and tweaked the system (t410, windows 7), boot up time is not only significantly faster, and upon boot up task manager reports only 99MB of memory cached, but I've gotten it down to 27 processes, and power usage is slightly lower (leaving power manager installed to check).
If you check the T410 review here, you'll see that they claim they got around 7.5 hours on the 9-cell battery. Some people have said they can't get any where near that and don't know exactly how the admins got that, nor what their testing methodology is. To be honest, I think you're being nitpicky about this, I really don't think it's worth sending it in for that.
I suggest just cleaning up the crapware you don't need, and tweak it a little. Nobody will ever get the same results across the board as everyone's usage habits, and installed programs, are all different. I really don't think it's worth stressing over.
That's my professional opinion.

 

Also check the BIOS whether any power saving is disabled. Otherwise I agree with Roger, sounds more or less normal to me.