T400 and Win 7- how to enhance battery life

Since upgrading to Windows Seven, my battery life has dropped off considerably, and I'm lucky to get six hours on a full charge with my 9-cell battery, where I could get over nine hours in Vista. It seems like my T400 is using much more power, though for what I'm not sure.

On power source optimized, with all settings at low, integrated gfx and the screen at six bars, I use between 17-24 watts and this is much higher than what I use in Vista. Could it be a driver issue? Which one? Anyone have any suggestions or a similar experience?

Thanks for you help.

 

How long has Windows 7 been installed? I ask because Vista (and likely 7 as well) need several days and a few reboots before the power usage stabilizes.

That power usage is clearly too high. With those settings you should be close to 10 watts, and certainly not 17-24.

Have you installed the Lenovo drivers (use Vista ones if you haven't). Also, when you open up device manager, how many Errors do you have?

 

17-24 is a little high. I'm at 12 watts with brightness half way and wi-fi on and I usually get about 5 hours

 

I've been using Windows Seven since January, but I've noticed the increased power consumption since the last Power Manager update to ver. 2.42. The only error I have is for the Ricoh Memory Stick Host Controller, but the card reader works fine.

With Vista I can get under 10 watts during light use, but I'd rather figure out this problem rather than go back to Vista.

 

I tested 7 on my T61 and found higher consumption rates and CPU max temp at load is ridiculously high, take a look at this pic:



Maybe is the PM driver which I installed (2.42 too). I like the interface and all but the machine fan is always ON

 

Don't forget this is in beta, it may get better, or not.

 

The thing is, power consumption wasn't always this bad under Windows Seven. Initially it was slightly better than Vista, but just recently I've noticed the drop-off.

 

Have you checked if Audiodg.exe is causing high CPU load? (And if the Thinkpad PM device driver is working in Device Manager?)

I got my power consumption down by deactivating sound enhancements by this method:
right click on the speaker icon at the bottom right.
select Playback Devices
highlight the icon with the green check mark
click Properties
click the Enhancements tab
check Disable all enhancements

I also noticed that even if I set the maximum CPU speed to Lowest in PowerManager, the CPU often throttle up to maximum speed.