96% charged, 3:50 mins left, 6-cell?

I ordered a 6-cell battery. It is 96% charged, and it says I only have 3 hours 50 minutes left.

Did they give me a 4-cell by mistake? Does a 6-cell have so few life? Is the reader inaccurate?

Thanks

 

Check to make sure your using onboard graphics. Also, do you have bluetooth on?

 

does it stick out a bit? then it's a 6-cell

my 6-cell gives me about 3 hours;

it may take a few cycles to reach it's full capacity:
Breaking In New Batteries - new batteries come in a discharged condition and must be fully charged before use. It is recommended that you fully charge and discharge your new battery two to four times to allow it to reach its maximum rated capacity.
http://www.prioritylaptopbattery.com/faq.htm#max

 

Depends if you are on power save and how bright is ur display..and ur GPU and CPU

 

Did you even mention what laptop o.o?

 

Sorry, T400. And yeah, it does stick out so it is the 6-cell I ordered. And, since I got the XP downgrade, I'm stuck on the integrated graphics until I change it in my BIOS.

Oh well, guess I'll see

 

Remember these battery Quotes from the NBR's review on the T400 were with Vista and not XP. Vista might be a bit more efficient, not sure.

 

I noticed the same thing with mine. At 96% it slooooooows down.

 

On my T400 I've only recharged/discharged my battery 5 times.. but with my 4 cell, 50% brightness, Bluetooth Off, Drive in the Ejected state (not physically out of the system) and integrated graphics, and wireless off I can get about 5 hours + while doing some word processing and no music. My computer was typically using about 8watts or so

With wireless on and some light browsing I can get about 4.5 hours.

From what I gather, turning on the thinklight seems to take up about .5 watts. Plugging in an external USB mouse (I sometimes use a logitech Nano) seems to add another 1 watt.

the "worst" performance I got was a little shy of 4 hours with some thinklight on some light web browsing and external mouse

(I have the P8600 chip, and the chip is set to be in the low state... I haven't tried it in lowest yet).

In any case I didn't have any music playing since I was working on a paper.

 

wow idk how its even possible to have a functioning computer like that;

seems pointless to have it at 0% brightness, everything off, and stand-by
but claim 6+hours...

 

No need to be nasty about it. And for your information the laptop never went into standby. If you don't need a device, then don't leave it on.
My point is that Kevins estimates of battery life on the T400 weren't ridiculous. I can easily imagine a 9cell getting 10 hours of life.

 

Aestiel, how are you getting 4-5 hours on a 4-cell?...I get similar battery life, but on a 6 cell...do you disable devices in the Device Manager and/or BIOS??...how did you "set" the P8600 to a low state?...do you wait for the optical drive to "eject" on its own cause I can't seem to force it manually? Which OS are you running? Is there a program to monitor the power state of the CPU in real-time with a visual indicator? Thank you!

 

Just as expected. With similar settings as described in the review, the 4 cell should net at least 4 hours 10 minutes based off of the 37.44 Whr.

Thanks for your insights. 50% should be plenty bright with an LED.

 

I'm using XP right now straight from the factory. I did not do a clean install, however, I did uninstall some of bloatware and some of the Thinkvantage software (Help, Security, Access Connection).

I set the graphics to integrated in BIOS, but eject the DVD drive via fn + F8 (I think) in windows. I also disable the bluetooth via fn + F5 but use the physical switch to disable the internet.

The program to monitor the power state of the laptop overall (not just the CPU) is with the Thinkvantage battery software (I love it!). Its not a "visual indicator" in the form of the graph, it just spits out numbers and updates every 30 seconds or so. The thinkvantage software tends to be a bit more liberal on the battery life estimations than the windows software, but time remaining is usually only about 10 minutes off. With the Thinkvantage battery software you can also make custom power settings and thats where you can set your CPU state. Additionally, you can choose to automatically have the screen at 0 brightness when you're booting into windows/logging off/shutting down and stuff to save some battery life which is what I do. Other than that my general settings were in a previous post.

 

That is cool.. so doing that to my x200.

 

Thanks for the tip, Aestiel, I like the ThinkVantage Power Manager too...did manage to create a new profile with an Adaptive setting for the CPU...you got me thinking tho, that maybe i don't need the fingerprint and Security software...only have it set up to help the wife remember passwords...i'll disable it and see how much time i'll net...but even with the CPU in the adaptive state, how did you know that you haven't reached the ultimate deep sleep state on Penryn? Thank you for sharing.