Couple Questions on my T400

I've had my T400 almost since they first came out. Only after a year my 9 cell shorted out so I figured if I was going to get horrible battery life I might as well do it on the cheap, so I got a third party one.

I am wondering what your guys experiences with the third party six cell batteries is, it's got one less amp hour than the stock, and I'm getting about three hour battery life out of it.

At idle I'm using 8 watts of power. Currently I have a 7200 RPM drive in it, and only two gigs of ram. Is there anything I should look for in ways to improve the battery life?

Also, is there any way to switch the graphics card other than right clicking on the battery meter that Lenovo puts on my task bar? The meter is hidous and I'd like to hide it but I can't figure out how to switch from discrete to integrated any other way.

 

well get a SSD if you are worried about battery life. But given it is an aftermarket battery then this is sort of expected behaviour. On a new 6 cells panasonic battery i can get around 4.5 hrs battery life on my T400 with the intel gpu.

 

Okay that's not out of whack then. And for $30 I could buy three or four third party batteries for the price of one Lenovo.

Got any ideas on other ways to switch the graphics card?

 

if you are in the states, then you should check the Lenovo outlet and see whether you can get a genuine battery on the cheap.