T60 battery life

I want to get a better idea about the battery life of T60 with x1400 before I pull the trigger.

Please share your typical battery life and state your screen size and the setting+workload you use to achieve the battery life.

Thanks in advance.

 

I have a 14.1" t60 with the x1300:

I get between 2.75-3.25 hours with wireless & BT on, browsing the web and typing with screen brightness 7/9. I have the 6 cell battery.

 

There is a modular battery if you need more time. It is about $100 on Pricegrabber.

 

I can pull about 4-4.5 hours with wireless on and brightness at about half. If I turn wireless off it jumps up to about 5 hours, with the 9 cell.

 

Only 2.5 hours for my T60 14.1' with 6 cell, wireless+word+firefox+ 5/7 brightness
Not satisfied for sure. :-(

 

If I do everything to save power (brightness down, wireless off, all that), I can get about 6.5 hours of typing in Word. Add wireless to that and it's 5-5.5 hours. 15" X1400 9-cell

Those of you who want more run time, if you are using hibernate this is part of the problem. For some reason it consumes less battery if you turn it on from a shut down than from a hibernate.

 

There are some polls about battery life of T60
6-cell: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=34463
9-cell: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=34502

 

What exactly is happening in hibernate? Does it save the windows that are open on your desktop so when you return it to the normal state, all the windows are there as you left them? Why don't people shut-off the laptop entirely? Is it only to save time in start-up, or does it affect the life of the laptop by doing so, something we should all be aware of?

 

Your understanding is mostly correct. Shut-down laptops will lose your work environment(Opened windows)

more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernate_(OS_feature)

 

It just saves everything that was open to the hard drive so it's all there when you restart. Also, it doesn't run any of the self checks, so it boots faster. Why it uses more battery life when you pull out of hibernate as opposed to a shut down, I don't know, I suspect a bug.

 

What about stand by? What exactly is happening here? And if were are going to place the laptop into a closed bag (or sleeve) what mode do we want to use while transporting? The fans shouldn't be running right?

 

Stand By puts on to the ram the same info hibernate puts on to the hard drive. You should not use stand by if you are going to move the computer, this is likely to result in a crash. So, when transporting, either off or hibernate.

 

That is after just a little over 5 hours of constant but light use when I was in class one night. I have a single 9 cell battery with a 15" IPS T60 with Core Duo processor and with it on the default 'on battery' settings (almost on the dimmest screen setting, but wireless is on), on average I get between 4.5 and 5.5 hours with it. I do this a minimum of 2 times per week because I have 5 hours of night class in a row from 5:30pm to 10:30pm on Mondays and Wednesdays. So far I have been impressed by how the battery has maintained its capacity. It has gone through at least 60 close to full charge cycles and many many shorter cycles as well and so far has about 90-92% of its original capacity.

On my old Dell D600, by about 100 close to full cycles and 1 year's time the battery only had about 1/3rd of its capacity. And I had both the primary battery and the media bay battery in there. Of course between those two in the beginning I was getting about 7.5 hours of use which was great.

IBM has a good charger included with the T60 and a good charging routine that takes a bit longer toward the end of the cycle charge but if left to run it keeps from stressing your battery and thus reducing capacity as much over time.

I also ensure my battery never goes below 10% unless it's an emergency... the last few percent of capacity of a lithium ion battery is VERY stressful for the battery to use. Don't listen to the people who tell you not to leave your laptop plugged into the charger overnight or the people who tell you to drain your battery entirely and then recharge it - they're the people who don't understand that battery chemistry has changed substantially from the days of Nickel Cadmium and Nickel metal hydride. Lithium Ions are a very different type of battery chemistry and for some reason, still, half of the 'electronics experts' I come across these days still haven't "caught up" to this despite LiIon being out there for years now.

 

I have a T60 with a 6 cell battery! What Battery life have you experienced with a new machine using a 6 cell Battery?

I am getting about 2.5 to 3hrs with less than medium use.

I love this machine! It's very fast! 20% quicker than my Toshiba. However, I am feeling; that I should never forget the AC power source.

Sircas