T61 7-Cell battery life

Hey guys, if anyone one out there has an T61, 14" with discrete graphics, what kind of battery life are you getting? My 7-cell doesn't seems really crappy, as it only lasts about 2.5hrs with wi-fi on, vista home, and on the power source optimized setting (lowest)...am I expecting too much or is there something wrong with my laptop? Thanks for any inputs!

 

the best I could every get out of a T61 with nvidia gfx was 4 hours. No wifi, max power settings and undervolted

I range between 2 to 3 hours under normal usage (with wifi on, medium screen brightness, etc...)

 

I get about 3 hours with wifi off, all settings on lowest (battery saver) and minimum brightness. When I want to get long battery I always turn wifi off so I can't really compare with you, but I'd expect about 2.5 hours with it on.

 

I have a T61, 7cell and Vista x64. Similar numbers.

 

You might want to try RMClock to undervolt; the built in performence-on-demand mode can also be made more agressive for throttling then the built in hardware.

Other then that, it doesn't sound too bad. You might want to consiter:
-WiFi can use a lot of power, can you go without it?
-How old is your battery? Have you used cycled it a lot, or gone from 100% to nearly empty a lot?
-Can you buy the slot battery to get another 40% life?

 

I get a little over 3 hours with my almost 1.5 year old 7-cell; low brightness and wifi-on. Though, I've mostly kept it thresheld at 40% on AC. 193 cycles.

 

Wow, an interesting thread. I've got a 14.1" R61 with integrated graphics and the 6-cell battery. It's almost exactly 1 yr old and after 155 cycles, I still get about 3 hrs web-browsing (hence WiFi on) and screen brightness at between 66-85%. It does seem that integrated graphics take a significantly lighter bite from the battery.

 

Looks like I'm not alone...I guess the discrete graphics + wifi really sucks up power, I'm just jealous of my friend's Xseries and he gets like 10000hrs (exagerated) thanks for your numbers ppl.