Disabling unused system components?

Hi, I'd just like others thoughts on that. Even though I rarely use the battery and heat isn't a problem, does anyone disable unused system components in the BIOS?
Considering I never use the trackpad, trackpoint, wireless card, bluetooth, ethernet, all the ports except for USB, I've thought to leave them disabled. Would that help to conserve battery power if I ever want to unplug?

 

I guess I'm the only one.

 

Disabling the wireless card and Bluetooth (use the master wireless switch on your Thinkpad) will definitely extend battery life. Everything else that you listed is pretty much negligible.

The only component I disable other than those two is the optical drive - I have it set to disable automatically when not in use (setting in Power Manager). But that's more out of annoyance with the bright green UltraBay light when in a dark room.

 

I thought about disabling everything in the BIOS, because I literally don't use anything but the USB ports, plus I use an external mouse and keyboard. My T410 just functions as a desktop replacement.

 

I've disabled WWAN, Ethernet, Wireless USB, Bluetooth and all ports except USB. Wish there was a way to disable certain usb ports too since I only use one port on the side occasionally. This has sped up boot time some (~1sec) and also saved about 1w of power in my T400.

 

Hehe, well, I guess any savings is better than none. But I thought it would have had more of an impact than that.

 

Saving 1 watt just be disabling unused components/ports is very significant. How much did power consumption reduce for you?

 

Sorry for the late reply. I disabled everything but the USB ports and it *seemed* to save about 3 watts (according to power manager).
With my custom windows 7 install it's already pretty slow to boot up, so I don't think I really noticed any difference on boot up time.