theoretical battery life comparison

I just wanted to see what some of your opinions were on a theoretical battery life comparison between two ThinkPads. I'll explain more, but first here are the specs:

#1
ThinkPad T42 (my system)
IPM 725 1.6 GHz/400 MHz FSB/2 MB L2
1 GB (512 MB x 2) 333 MHz DDR SDRAM, dual channel (I assume...)
40 GB 5400 RPM HDD
14.1 XGA TFT
ATI Radeon 7500 32 MB DDR
CD-RW/DVD-ROM
std 6 cell Li-Ion

#2
ThinkPad T43 (my future system, maybe)
IPM 750 1.86 GHz/533 MHz FSB/? MB L2
2 GB (1 GB x 2) 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM dual channel
60 GB 7200 RPM HDD
14.1 SXGA TFT (not sure if this makes a difference)
ATI Radeon x300 64 MB DDR2
CD-RW/DVD-R MultiBurner
std 6 cell Li-Ion

Now, obviously the T43 will take more energy to run because of the faster HDD, more and faster memory etc. etc. So, my question is: given the above info and any personal knowledge/experience, and assuming general usage, what average percentage decrease in battery life (or just how many minutes of battery life chopped off) would you estimate would occur going from #1 to #2? (State any necessary assumptions.)

I'm just curious.
Thanks

 

The HDD actually won't impact battery much. While it is faster and might draw more power when it runs, it will run less, which offsets the cost. Your real issue here is the new sonoma platform which is more hungry. I wouldn't expect a massive drop off though, probably less than 5%.

 

Thanks.

...and of the memory and higher res screen?


As well can you give me a run-down on hard drive operation? I guess I assumed it slowed down when it is not acessing data, but does it completely stop and if so, how often does it perform this operation?

 

The T43 uses the newer faster DDR2 memory whereas the T42 uses the older slower PC2700 memory. With a higher resolution sreen you are able more of the of the screen. In Excel for example, you'll be able to see columns A-F and 20 rows. In SXGA, you'll be able columns A-K and 30 rows. There are settings in power management utility in control panel which control when the hard drive is shut down. IBM also has a good utility called MaxiMiiser which is installed on ThinkPads.