What exactly am I doing wrong? T500 Battery life

I have battery stretch enabled, everything is pretty much at the lowest setting, wireless off, etc. Yet my power draw idle is 14 watts. With the screen off, it's 11. What use is that?

According the T500 review.

"In dedicated graphics mode, the screen brightness set to 60%, and wireless active the T500 managed 5 hours and 6 minutes before it shut itself down at 5% remaining. Even though it is still way under the T400 by a couple of hours, it is still very impressive for a 15" notebook. In integrated grahics mode with the same settings, the system squeezes out an hour and a half more, bringing the average consumption from about 13 watts down to 11 watts. The 9-cell battery gives you more than enough time to watch a movie or two on a flight, or even get some work done. "

And countless others have been saying they are getting good battery life. At 85% battery, i only have 5:35 estimated time left at idle. 14 watt power draw...

 

are you using a 9 cell also?

can you open your power manager, expand all the settings for the current power plan, and then take a screen shot and post it here? Maybe we can find something there. I've managed to squeeze almost 6 hours out of a six cell. Also, is there any difference in the design capacity of your battery and the full charge capacity?

 

Definitely show us what you are using in power manager.

 

search function is your friend

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=403152

 

wow i have to retype this because I accidentally somehow hit back hotkey on the keyboard...

Anyway, I figured out it switched to dedicated for some reason. Heh, sorry. I don't know why it did that and i didn't know how to check. I'm still learning with the laptop.

I have to say that I half expected more battery life on integrated graphics mode when compared to my dell e6400 i sent back. It had the dedicated graphics option and the discharge rates between the two were similar. Ranging from 9w-14w depending on wifi/light usage. I suppose the smaller and LED screen made it triumphant... still slightly disappointed.

Also, what's up with the dell e6400 charging so much faster?

Lastly, (AFAIK from what i've seen and done with the laptop anyway) why the hell does the power manager, when opened up, take more than 50% of my P8700 processor? It jumps the watt usage by at least 3watts. Such irony that it's supposed to help with battery but when you tinker with it, it shortens battery life.

This was not the case in dell's power managing software. Their's was also much more simpler imo :|

But seriously, what's up with the power manager eating cpu for breakfast?

 

in my T400, there is a surge after PM opens, but it settles after a minute, or less.