T410 vs T400 battery life (integrated)

Hi All,
My wife recently bought a T410 (i5 - 520) and she was telling me that the battery life on the T410 seems to be much worse than on the T400 (i.e. with a 9 cell on the T410 she's getting about 5-6 hrs, but with the 9 cell on the T400 she was getting about 8-10 hrs). Both are using Windows XP.

In terms of performance, there isn't any comparison, the T410 with the i5 is way faster, however, I would have thought that the battery life would have been extended as well because of the integration of the GPU/memory controller on the CPU die and larger battery, but that doesn't seem to be the cases). Some things that probably decreased the battery life (5400 hard drive vs 7200 fde hard drive - I wonder how much this affects the battery life)

Anyhow, I was wondering what experience everyone has and if anyone has any suggestion to increasing battery life.

Thanks!
P.

 

Uh, you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison here with 2 integrated GPU systems, yeah?

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 and manipulating aero would make it run the T410 longer than in XP...

 

Download RMClock and check power consumption of each system.

 

I have no experience with a T410, but my T400(P8400, 500GB HDD plus a 640GB HDD in the Ultrabay, Win7 x64, 1440x900 LCD, ATI HD3470, 802.11n wifi and BT) gets about seven hours out of the 9-cell with the display at half brightness, wifi on, bluetooth off but browsing minimally... if I'm browsing constantly I'm running it down to about five and a half hours. I have 79 cycles and a 76.64wh/84.24wh capacity. I could go for a new battery and get some extended life, but the T400 works well enough for me.

 

my T400 can get around 4 hours of battery on the 6 cells, and around 6 hours max on the 9 cells using the P8600 CPU on win 7.

Also, the integration of the integrated GPU/memory controller on the CPU die, is not about energy saving but rather about material saving and cost cutting.