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    Battery life sucks on V 1400, Dell Power Manager/Powermizer?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by ocellaris, Mar 7, 2008.

  1. ocellaris

    ocellaris Notebook Evangelist

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    I went from a Vostro 1400 to a T61, and as fortune would have it, I ended up getting my original 1400 back and I still have the T61. I like the 1400 quite a bit, but the thing bothering me right now is that lack of a good power manager. With the T61, I use the Lenovo Power Manager to set the CPU speed down to minimum whenever I am running on battery power. This seems to stretch things out quite a bit. I see no such utility for the 1400 available from Dell, so I guess the CPU just runs at its normal speed all the time?

    I am running a fresh install of Vista with all the Windows Updates and latest Dell drivers/BIOS. Also I am using the new Nvidia 169.44 drivers that just came out yesterday from laptopvideo2go.com. Does anyone know of a way to better control things and lower power consumption when I am running on batteries?

    Thanks for any help!
     
    ocellaris, Mar 7, 2008
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  2. SmoothTofu

    SmoothTofu Inspiron 1420 Owner

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    If you use Vista, you can go to Power Options and change the Processor power management in the advanced settings.
     
    SmoothTofu, Mar 7, 2008
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  3. ocellaris

    ocellaris Notebook Evangelist

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    I see the "Maximum Processor State" in there, however it just seems like the CPU would still be running at full speed and it would just throttle the load based on the wording they use.

    Also do you know if there is a way to get the battery meter to show estimated time remaining?
     
    ocellaris, Mar 7, 2008
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  4. ocellaris

    ocellaris Notebook Evangelist

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    The estimated time is working now. Also it looks like I am getting good battery life, so maybe the times when I was first looking were because Vista was still setting itself up o_O
     
    ocellaris, Mar 7, 2008
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  5. Soulburner

    Soulburner Notebook Evangelist

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    Vista uses Indexing extensively until its done. It may be an entire day or more until you are "idle" and getting normal power use.
     
    Soulburner, Mar 7, 2008
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