what affects battery life the most?

So abaxter got a little under 4 hours from his T60 with a 9-cell battery. Lenovo's specs say "up to 9 hours" for this computer. So there's clearly a progression from the 5400 RPM, 14", integrated video T60 that may actually get 9 hours; to the T60P, 15", 7200 RPM, ATI FireGL, which Lenovo says gets "up to 5.2 hours" with 9 cells (given Abaxter's 4 hours with a slower HD and lesser video card, this is seems dubious).

So, what do people think affects battery life the most? Here is my guess, from largest effect to smallest:

1. going from 14" -> 15" screen
2. integrated video card -> anything else
3. X1300 or X1400 -> FireGL
4. 5400 RPM HD -> 7200 RPM HD
5. X1300 -> X1400 video card (is there
even a difference for battery life with this?)

I'm hoping a T60 with 7200 RPM HD, X1400, 14" screen, 9 cells will give ~6 hours.

 

That sounds reasonable... what you have to do is decrease the screen brightness and throttle the CPU speed down. The screen brightness probably uses up the most battery life...

To get the absolute most battery life out of your notebook, you could also try some undervolting...

 

As you are saying, this max of 9h battery life is of course based on a T60 with minimum specs.

 

I have a T43 and I've done power measurements and I was able to get my laptop to use less than 10 Watts at certain times providing a 5+ Hour battery life on my 6 Cell.

Typically without modifications/normal brightness, laptops use about 15-20 Watts. While there is hard disk activity and maximum cpu usage, it goes up to 30W. Here's what I rank in power usage.

Hard Drive: 1-3 Watts depending on usage
Screen: 3-7 Watts
CPU: 3-20 Watts
Fan: Up to 2.5 Watts
GPU + Memory: 2 - 10 Watts
RAM (1GB DDR2): 1-8 Watt
Chipset and others: 3-15 Watts

This is for a 5400RPM HD, 14' SXGA Screen, Dothan 1.83GHz, ATI X300.

I think the X1300/X1400 would use considerable more power than X300's because they're on the first product generation manufacturing process.

7200 vs 5200 accounts for less than 1 Watt. Most of differences that would change the difference between 3 hour vs 5 hours on a 9 Cell, is CPU Frequency/Voltage, GPU Freq/Voltage, and Hard Drive spindown, screen brightness, and C2 State.

 

Brings me to the question of with what number of cells a T-series thinkpad battery comes.

 

Standard: 6-cell
Extended: 9-cell

From my observations WiFi affects battery life a lot. Maybe even more than screen brightness. Of course, if your CPU is running at 100% load all the time, it's gonna eat your battery pretty darn quick. Same with GPU.