Thinkpad T410 dedicated vs T400 switchable, battery life and CS performance ;)

I currently own a T400 with switchable graphics and 4 + 3 cell ultrabay batteries. How will the battery life of a T410 with dedicated graphics compare? (6 cell + 3 cell ultrabay). Is there any chance that T410 will be switchable in the future? Are there new models coming up with this option? (And, does the T410 with integrated graphics run CS in native res well, my current T400 with the Ati gets 111 fps with all settings set to low in the stress test).

My T400 using win 7 64 bit wifi and bt on: 9.3W 10/15 bars screen brightness idling on integrated and 12W ditto idling with discrete, basically the same numbers as the notebookreview review found: Discrete: average power draw 12.5W Integrated: 9.7W. Notable differences could be the fact that I'm using an intel gen2 ssd and an older bios not optimized for win 7 due to a wifi card compatibility issue.

T400: 4 cell 38wh + 29 wh 3 cell bay battery = 67wh
Integrated battery life: 7.2h
The 410 57 wh 6 cell / 94 wh 9 cell
Discrete battery life: 4.56h 6 cell / 7.52h 9 cell
Integrated battery life: 5.87h 6 cell / 9.69h 9 cell
(Pipe) Dream computer: T410s with ultrabay batt and switchable graphics:76wh and 8.4h, still nice and light. Maybe I'll wait.

Conclusion: I'll be sacrificing up to 36% of battery life going from the T400 to the T410 if I want to avoid a huge battery sticking out of it. If going for the *shrug* 9 cell I'll gain minimum 5 % as the gap might be a bit less due to the T410's faster and more energy efficient CPU, and perhaps due to the fact that I was using a SSD drive which should (in theory) save you about a watt on average. (It is rather infuriating that lenovo has removed support for the ultra-bay battery with the only imaginable reason to force consumers to buy the more expensive T410s, that also rather infuriatingly doesn't come with either switchable or discrete only graphics - are their designers on crack or is it their financial dept forcing their designers to cut corners to release a products prematurely?)

Now, Is there any way of making the discrete version use less power when idling? And will there ever be a t410s with discrete graphics?

 

what is switchable graphics

 

I can't answer your question, but I can tell you that the T410 has dropped the Ultrabay battery. You can still use the Ultrabay as a secondary HDD, but no battery. Instead they offer the slice battery, or you could just get a larger 9 cell battery. I believe only the T410s offers the ultrabay battery.

 

That's silly, just a way for lenovo to force people to get the t410s if they want to save weight. Might as well get a T510 Or, can the T410S pull of CS:source in a decent manner? Removing options that needn't be removed to force me to buy another more expensive product makes me angry!

I've updated my post to reflect this.

 

Yeah it's baffling to me why they took out the ultrabay battery option. The slice is nice and all.. but it's a tad big and heavy and maybe everyone doesn't need such a drastic extension of battery time.

As for the T410s, any answers would be speculation, since only like 2 people in the world have had one shipped to them. But I would imagine it wouldn't be a problem, Source is old and most integrated graphics chips have the power that the discrete cards did back when source was new. I don't know if you could run it full on with DX10 and all, but you can definitely get playable frame rates out of it if you meddle with settings.

 

Can you ask these two people to load up CS Source? Agreed about the slice. It's not that nice and all.

 

according to lenovoblogs, the bay battery support is pulled due to "cost" reasons.

as for t410s, when it (eventaully) ships with swichable graphics it will at least be just as good as t410 dedicated or t400 switchable, because i think (and don't quote me on this) the t410s will get the same gpu as the t410

 

Hallelujah. Guess I'll wait then and save up some bucks. Booring!