T400 consuming a lot of power

I have a T400, and no matter what I do, I can't get the power usage down. Under Linux, the machine sucks 16w idle, with LED screen brightness set to the lowest possible, CPU at 800MHz, and HDD spun down. Under Windows, it sucks down 13w with battery stretch on, and Aero disabled.

This really disturbs me, as I had two T61s that did much better than this. A 15.4" with CCFL backlight and Q140NVSm consumed ~8w idling, and my 14.1" T61 with CCFL and X3100 was down to 5.5w idle. What the hell is wrong with my T400?

 

i had this problem. my cpu usage was due to too many anti spyware/ firewall programs installed. i removed some, and removed some programs that i didn't use (that were running in the background) and now its back to ~10% at idle.

 

Your T61 went down to 5.5 watts of power?

 

whats ur cpu usage at idle? is it a virus running in the bg causing high cpu usage, hence causing your cpu to throttle up and raise the voltage and the core speed

 

5.5w was an all time best. It was closer to 6-7w idling. I just don't get my older machines were so much better on battery.

Both are clean installs, one of Vista, and the other Arch Linux. I just reinstalled Vista on my T400 today to do some Photoshop work.

Windows is annoying me, as it will not let me power off my bluetooth radio, and I have no control over a secondary wireless card installed. I guess this is just a rant post.

Anybody having better results with their T400s?

 

I have no problems getting my power consumption low on the t400...

this is my all time low...



what happens when you press fn+f5? you should be able to turn of bluetooth there, you you can just go into device manager.... fn+f5 works in the newest ubuntu btw

edit: oh, what version of windows are you running? is it a factory install or clean?

 

Vista x86 clean install, Ubuntu 8.10 three days ago, and Arch Core Dump installed yesterday. I just can't understand what is up with this thing, it chows power like my desktop.

The only thing I can think of is having Atheros wireless cards in my T400 - I'll try taking them out and see how power consumption does.

 

holy crap! under 5 watts? I've tried everything and I can't get under 8.

 

its with the screen off, and HD at idle(off) otherwise its about 8

 

Both cards out barley does anything - it just keeps the CPU idle longer from having to poll a network.

I have an old BIOS version (1.1.3), I am going to update to see if it helps.

 

download and install the registry patches from here...
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70439

 

It isn't that - the problem is OS independent. It happens in seven Linux distros and in XP and Vista 32/64.

 

I think it is OS dependent, I could not get below 13-14w in ubuntu no matter what I did...

you might as well give the patches a try, a lot of people on this forum reported success on clean installs

edit: the same happens in XP, people cant get their power consumption down to 8

 

BIOS update did nothing, still drawing 17w at Vista desktop. Installing hotfixes to see if they help Windows ease up on the battery.

 

With half the updates in, there isn't any difference. I rebooted the machine, and it is drawing 19w on maximum battery life plan with battery strech enabled. Finishing the other, and hoping that a miracle will happen.

 

battery strech did not really help at all on my laptop, I think this is because with aero on, the gpu is used for destkop windows manager, and with 16bit color, and aero off, it uses the cpu which has a really efficient idle state

 

@pcharouz,

how do you monitor wattage usage in ubuntu? what app/cmd? Thank you.

 

It takes vista about a week for it's power draw to normalize after a clean install. Have you tried just waiting?

 

well, I'd say it takes multiple reboots, rather than time.
just waiting doesn't do much.
and be sure to download the latest updates from lenovo

 

I agree with this as well. I thought there was something seriously wrong with my x200 Tablet because I couldn't get power usage to drop below 11 watts no matter what I did (0/15 brightness, no radios, idle screen, stretch enabled). After waiting a week however, it has improved substantially. I can get it down to 6 watts under ideal conditions (same as above while typing a word document), or a reasonable 8-9 watts with mid level brightness and wi-fi enabled. If you have only had the computer a little while, I would suggest waiting for Vista to settle down before you panic.

 

just right click on the power icon, and there is a power manager/graph, I actually really like this utility, I wish there was something like this in windows.

 

This is my wattage usage on my T61 4:3 with X3100 graphics. Running the CPU undervolted at the minimum allowed voltage:

 

Perhaps you are getting so much wattage consumption because Vista tends to do a lot of things during idle on fresh installs. Vista is doing Superfetching, indexing, etc.