battery life on lenovo T400 with 6 cell

I've had my T400 for a few weeks now, and I'm only getting max 4.5 hours with medium brightness set on energy star/power optimized.

On reviews, they were getting 5.5 hours.

am I missing something?

 

I find real-life battery times tend to be lower then factory/review claims. Your 4.5 hours life is pretty much what I'm seeing with my T400(had it for a week now)

 

It's definitely lower than advertised I think. I have a 9 cell and I only get like 6:30 which was the advertised time for a 6.

This is for the R400 btw so a little different.

 

Check out threads in the Lenovo and even Dell forum on ways to maximize battery life. A few things to consider would be undervolting, doing a VLite install (or clean Win 7 install), upgrading to a SSD, getting used to a lower brightness setting, disabling unused hardware and services, etc. Do you have the LED backlight? I've seen users w/ T400 and 6-cell getting 6+ hours of battery life and 9-cell getting 10+ hours, so it IS doable.

 

With brightness set at five, battery stretch, integrated graphics, and wireless on. I just do web browsing, MS Powerpoint, and MS Word I have 78% remaining and 4:47 hours left.

 

how do you set integrated graphics on?

 

It's switchable - doesn't it automatically turn on when you go on battery mode?

 

No. One would think that simply makes sense, but all the genius-overpaid engineers at Lenovo couldn’t figure out a way to do this.

(Maybe I’ll write something that will...)

 

so uh, how do you switch integrated graphics on and off?

 

Right-click the battery icon on your taskbar and the third option from the top should say "Switchable Graphics"

 

While I do agree with this most of the time, my t400 does get 8.5-9.5 hours of battery life on average. Granted I rarely use it on nothing but battery since I have a multi screened dock setup, but I have done many days at work where I do nothing but battery and then I go home and use it for a little while as well.

Now I cannot comment on the 6 cell, but I can say that it is all in how you configure your rig. When they claim what they do that is with alot of things tweaked, and is definitely not the "out of box" performance. When I want to achieve the same battery that they do in reviews I have my screen turned to 0-1 brightness and pretty much all the power saver options configured (minus battery stretch, which I do despise a bit). For light days where I only have one rdp open or just doing very basic tasks at work Ill achieve this, otherwise I get significantly less. It is purely situational and all about how you configure things.

 

I'm still on the "Energy Star" power management profile, although I've started tweaking a few items here and there.

It's amazing that you can use your machine at 0-1 brightness. 5... this is probably the minimum for me.

Curious what your usage pattern is for battery recharge. Here's what I do, let me know if something isn't right:

I use my T400 unplugged, running on battery. I use it until the battery is around 10% - so basically it's nearly out. Then I shut down, plug it in the wall, and leave it charging overnight. Next morning, the machine is unplugged, it's fully charged, and ready for my next session.

In the "Battery Maintence" tab, I have the thresholds set to Start charging at 40%, and stop at 95%.

I try not to use the laptop while plugged in - since I've heard that hurts the battery more.

 

I work in an office so I have the bright florescent lights beaming down on me, but i can turn the lights off in my area without disturbing anyone(I like natural light or semi dark vs bright buzzing lights). With the screen this way I can achieve decent wattage while still maintaining a decent visual brightness.

As far as charging and plugging in, I use mine primarily on power at work and home with sometimes using battery life. After 4 months of having my thinkpad run 24/7 pretty much the battery life has not changed at all. Not to mention I did the same thing with my dell vostro, acer aspire one, acer 5672, ect all with the same results. I have yet to see a battery degrade over a 2 year time frame( I say 2 because its rare that i keep a laptop or have it survive longer then 2 years of my abuse...I mean hard work). I have had laptops last longer then 2 but thats a smaller sample, not to mention if a battery lasts 2+ years working the way it was designed/the same way it did when I received it then I'm not all that disappointed.

 

Under battery maintainence, what charging thresholds do you have set it to?

 

The default, so below 96% and charge til 100%.