Thinkpad S431 Battery Life

I have not been able to make it three hours on my battery. Lenovo claims 6 hours. I have seen users online post real-life battery life of 4-5 hours. What can I do to increase mine? I use power saver profile with medium screen brightness (7 out of 15 steps). I called Lenovo and they can't help me, I was told to limit background process and screen brightness, which I do. Am I missing a major component of normal battery life?

 

What are you doing with the system while on battery? My system (a different computer, but the same concept holds true) has a tremendous difference in battery life between surfing online forums while taking notes (7+ hours) and playing games (1-2 hours), with streaming video or playing DVDs somewhere in the middle (3-4 hours). For the record, Lenovo claims battery life of 11 hours on my system, which I've seen only when turning the screen backlight down to the lowest level and only taking notes without using wireless.

 

For all non x40 generation Thinkpads, The actual battery life is 1/2 to 2/3 the estimated amount.

This is also with a new battery, be lucky if it stays at 70% the orginal capacity after 1 year.

 

Mine has held fairly well. It's been just over a year and my 94 watt-hour battery now is down to 87 watt-hours. So it's down to around 92% of initial capacity, nowhere near as bad as the 70% you estimated. Also, the numbers I posted are using maximum battery lifetime mode (77 Whr vs. 87 Whr maximum).