What kind of battery life do you get with your IBM T40?

[ferrarifreak93]

I get 2:30 on the "High System Performance" setting (full brightness, wireless on) and about 3 hours on "Super Power Saver". This is nowhere NEAR the 5 hours claimed by Anandtech here. What up with this?

 

[wisdomtooth]

I can get about 4 hours on super power saver on my T41's batt, though it could have been better if my battery wasn't so abused earlier during its life (I used to keep it constantly fully charged, which I learned was a bad thing to do).

How old is your battery? If you had it for more than a year and had put it through some rough use, degradation is to be expected...

 

[fbrdphreak]

First of all, what wireless card do you have? If you don't have the Intel Pro wireless card, you aren't going to get quite the advertised battery life. The Intel card has five different automatic power states, whereas the IBM a/b/g cards have three manual power states. Also, what size battery do you have & how many "watt hours" is it currently rated for according to IBM's software?
For instance, I have a T42 Dothan with a 6-cell battery. Out of the box, it is rated at ~48 WHrs and at that capacity I would get about 3 hours of use with full brightness, wifi, and adaptive CPU. Since I got the battery in October, the capacity has decreased to 42WHrs :| But with full brightness, wifi, & adaptive CPU I get about 2.5 hours. With low brightness & wifi, I get around 3-3.5 hours. With no wifi I can push it to 4 hours (I think). You really need the 9-cell battery for 5+ hours. And the Intel card helps a good bit too

IIRC, High System Performance leaves the CPU on maximum speed. On battery, it varies between like 1.2GHz-Max on my Dothan.

 

[Philippine Mango]

FYI for all IBM users, super power saver is NOT what you think. Open up the battery maximizer wizard and look under super power saver, you will see under CPU speed it's only slow and not VERY SLOW. Put it on VERY SLOW and you will be running the system at intel's minimum CPU speed 600mhz. Very slow isn't actually that bad... I was running the system on that setting WHILE playing farcry! It was albit choppy and didn't realize that I was running on it when I got to a really dark area and so I headed over to try and turn up the brightness in the ATI control panel so when I went to the desktop I noticed it was very dark as well, so I assumed I disconnected the power cord and that was so! I created a profile called Low Power on AC where its always running on low power (like if I'm downloading and going to sleep) that way I can put less stress on the system and save power.

 

[ferrarifreak93]

wtf! the ibm software says the battery is at 39Wh at full charge capacity. i've only had it for 1 year!

 

[eriqesque]

Originally posted by: ferrarifreak93
wtf! the ibm software says the battery is at 39Wh at full charge capacity. i've only had it for 1 year!

39Whrs from 42 after 1yr I say that's remarkable.
But thats why they call batteries consumables.

Originally posted by: wisdomtooth
(I used to keep it constantly fully charged, which I learned was a bad thing to do).

Keeping a Li-Ion battery fully charged all the time is not going to kill it if it's in the unit.
If you kept it out of the unit for a long period of time, then yes you would have been better served to store it at about 40% charge.

 

[ferrarifreak93]

Originally posted by: eriqesque

Originally posted by: ferrarifreak93
wtf! the ibm software says the battery is at 39Wh at full charge capacity. i've only had it for 1 year!

39Whrs from 42 after 1yr I say that's remarkable.
But thats why they call batteries consumables.

Originally posted by: wisdomtooth
(I used to keep it constantly fully charged, which I learned was a bad thing to do).

Keeping a Li-Ion battery fully charged all the time is not going to kill it if it's in the unit.
If you kept it out of the unit for a long period of time, then yes you would have been better served to store it at about 40% charge.

Actually, this battery comes new with 47Whrs. Also, what difference does it make if the battery is in the unit or not? It's still being kept at full charge regardless.

 

[eriqesque]

Read all about batteries and how to use them here