Thinkpad T60 Battery

Just received my Thinkpad T60 this week (model 200772U). The specs state that the battery life is 4.3 hours but I am getting 2.5 hours max. out of it, just barely enough to play back a movie. Is there anything I can adjust on my settings to maximize battery life?

It also takes over 1.5 hours to fully re-charge the battery. Is this normal? Anything I can do to make this quicker?

 

Be sure to fully drain your battery a couple of times atleast, to the point where the laptop shuts itself off.

It also depends on what applications you are running. A movie is quite stressful on the battery, the times given by Lenovo are usually timed doing non-cpu intensive tasks such as Word processing and the Internet.

Check your screen brightness. If your screen brightness is set to full, you will have less battery time. If you turn it down to half the amount, you should squeeze another 45 mins out of the battery.

If you are using wireless, your battery life will suffer also. Depending on your needs, keep wireless off when you don't need it.

Check background programs. Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Check the processes running in the background. End any you have no need for.

Laptop manufactures like to add a lot of bloatware to laptops when they are shipped out. If you can, do a clean install of XP and only load those programs and drivers you need/use. You will notice a significant approvement in battery life once you have done this, and turned down the brightness of the screen.

Good Luck

Cam

 

You should take "rated battery life" with a grain of salt.. Did you get the 15" screen with a 6 cell battery? If so, you're doing well to get 2.5 hours while watching a movie. DVDs take power to run the drive, power to process the signal, and even more power to run them through the video card, especially if you got the X1300 or X1400. I've got a 14" T60 with the 9 cell battery, and I get about 4 hours out of it.

 

That charging time is normal. Depending on the battery make, it should charge to 80% in an hour, and then the remainder, about another half hour or so.

 

Thanks for the tips. I did go to the Power Manager and change the scheme to "Maximum Performance." I noticed another scheme "Maximum Battery Life" but it dims the screen if I select it (not optimal when watching flicks).

I think I will also invest in another battery to help overcome such problems, and have a backup on hand.

What is the going rate on a battery for a 6 cell in the T60 that I have? Any places online that are good places to buy cheap or is it just the same to go to a Best Buy or another retailer?