T61 15.4" Battery Life

Does anybody know why Lenovo says that the 15.4" T-series gets up to 11 hours of battery while only quoting 6.5 hours for the 14.1" models? This is in the top-right corner of the T-series features page on their site.

I haven't been able to find any explanation. Seems like they all use the same batteries, and if anything, the 15.4" ought to do worse for having to drive a larger screen.

 

Companies tend to exaggerate the life of their batteries. The battery life is nowhere near 11 hours...although 6.5 might be able to be reached if you're using a 9-cell and just sitting and staring at your computer with the monitor off but that's not very productive now is it?

 

Can any laptop even idle for 11 hours?

 

Haha, not that I know of. Unless you're packing a Sony TZ with one of those extended battery packs. It IS possible to get 7 hrs out of a 9 cell. Basically, you're looking at wireless off, screen to lowest brightness, CPU and fan speed to lowest settings and only occasionally doing something that requires the hard drive to ramp up.

 

There were some older Panasonics which got phenomenal battery life.

 

I'm wondering mainly about the bump. I know 6.5 is idealism, but why does the 15.4" model warrant doubling the optimistic estimate? As far as I can tell, the battery options are the same for them all right? 9-cell + ultrabay at best.

I have a 14.1" T61 with a 9-cell, an X3100, and a 2.1ghz Penryn, and I get about 5 hours of battery life doing stuff with wifi on. Thats total ballpark because I can't stand to be doing stuff constantly, so I occasionally close the lid to talk to someone or do something else, but not turn the machine off. Just saw that on their site and wondered if I could be wrenching even more life out of a 15" unit.