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    Windows 7 significantly reducing T400 battery from Vista?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by perfectchaos180, Jan 27, 2010.

  1. perfectchaos180

    perfectchaos180 Notebook Enthusiast

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    So the title pretty much says it all. I have a thinkpad t400 with a 6 cell battery. With Windows Vista ultimate and using the Intel graphics I got about 5:30 hours of battery with about 75% brightness and nothing else different. I just upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate and now my battery barely reaches 2 hours...

    Most of the stuff I have read says Windows 7 improves battery life but mine was cut about 2/3! Any ideas to what is wrong?
     
    perfectchaos180, Jan 27, 2010
    #1
  2. lead_org

    lead_org Purveyor of Truth

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    the power management in the Win 7 must be running the laptop in performance mode rather than maximum battery mode.
     
    lead_org, Jan 27, 2010
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  3. XFlameWithin

    XFlameWithin Notebook Consultant

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    Driver problem.... When you come out of sleep (or other stuff), both graphics cards are activate = massive power usage. Try switching to Ati graphics, then back to Intel. That might solve the problem.
     
    XFlameWithin, Jan 27, 2010
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  4. TinyRK

    TinyRK Notebook Evangelist

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    TinyRK, Jan 27, 2010
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  5. Daidojih

    Daidojih Notebook Consultant

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    Probably a driver problem (as others mentioned before).

    -Also, when are you checking the time left? Doing certain tasks may make your battery life report lower time left (power on, sleeping, running intensive programs).

    -Check your power management settings

    -Check CPU load

    -Check battery health and cycles

    Just some stuff to look at :)
     
    Daidojih, Jan 27, 2010
    #5
  6. hceuterpe

    hceuterpe Notebook Evangelist

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    Did you explicitly install the intel chipset drivers with -overall flag, or did you just leave the built-in ones?

    If you did the latter, that's probably why..
     
    hceuterpe, Jan 28, 2010
    #6
  7. jdbfdhsvbhdvhs

    jdbfdhsvbhdvhs Notebook Consultant

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    Resurrecting this thread! I was just wondering hows the power compsumption now with windows 7 in the T400. I do have mine with W7 but I am tempted to go back to vista for the battery life since my 2530p is at the Hp repair warehouse. I use the 32-bit version btw.
     
    jdbfdhsvbhdvhs, Sep 11, 2010
    #7
  8. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

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    At least with the T500, I've found that Vista did give better battery life, even while not factoring in the resume-from-standby graphics bug. 32-bit and 64-bit should have the same power consumption.
     
    MidnightSun, Sep 11, 2010
    #8