Help me get my battery life to Lenovo preinstall levels on my T400

So I bought a T400 right after they came out and I have loved it every moment since I got it. However, I bought it with 2gb of RAM and the stock 80gb HD with Vista Home Premium 32bit. Since then, I've upgraded to 4gb of RAM and a new 320gb HD, so I installed Vista Ultimate 64bit on that new HD.

With that install, I could only ever squeeze maybe 5.5-6 hours of battery life out of my 9 cell battery. However, recently, that 320gb drive started getting bad sectors, so I've switched back to the 80gb HD with the stock Lenovo install while it gets RMA'd. I've noticed since then that I am getting close to 7-8 hours worth of battery life on the stock install.

I'm at a loss for why my battery life is so much worse under my own install of Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I've got Power Manager installed, I run the exact same power plans in both installs, and I've tweaked everything for max power settings. I run the brightness at 35% on battery on both installs. I even did the registry tweaks for the 64-bit power plan but that didn't make much of a difference.

Here are the only differences I can think of between the two:
1.) 64bit instead of 32bit
2.) The 64bit install uses Bitlocker to encrypt the entire drive
3.) Access Connections is not installed in the 64bit install

I can't think of anything else. As far as I can tell, both installs were identical power settings wise. Is there something else Lenovo does to the installs? Is it one of those three differences above that makes a huge difference? I wish I could just reimage the new hard drive with the 80gb install, but I really need 64bit... the 32bit nature of the OS limits my usable RAM down to an insane 2.5gb!

 

A few thoughts that come to mind:

1. BitLocker will always use a little more CPU (less than 10 percent) than a non-BitLocker system when accessing the drive.
2. Lenovo adds a lot of Microsoft Quick Fix Engineering (QFEs) updates to Vista to improve all sorts of things, especially with regard to power management. If you haven’t installed all of these little Windows updates from Lenovo you might want to give it a try.
3. The Lenovo drivers, as opposed to manufacturer drivers, are more tuned and tend to be a bit more heavy handed when it comes to power saving. If you are using manufacturer drivers you might want to try Lenovo’s instead.

Hope this helps.

 

Some other thoughts I have besides Bink's excellent points are that perhaps the extra ram needs more power to run with. Also is the new HDD the same speed?

 

On my T400
1) I am running Vista Business 64bit
2) I upgraded to 4GB
3) I am running Access Connections
4) I am getting 8-10 hours on the 9 cell

First, make sure you have installed the following:
-Intel Chipset Driver
-Intel Matrix Storage Manager (or TM Driver, if you have it installed)
-IBM Power Management Driver
-System Interface Driver
-Lenovo Power Manager

I assume you are running SP1. Who isn't these days?

Next, check the specs of the HDD you are using. The 80 GB you have, I am venturing to say, is Fujitsu, which idles at ~.16W, standby at .6W

I am not running encryption, but it might be waking up the cpu and the memory bus every time the HDD is being accessed. No encryption, and my cpu is at its lowest setting (5%-33%) with most of what I am doing.

Last, but not least, maybe it's the apps you're using? Run Resource Monitor (Task Manager-Performance tab-button down below) and see what your cpu usage is. It also shows you what your current set range is.

Since you've written you use the same settings under PM I won't question you on those, but it's always worth double-checking.

For power saving:
- CPU must be throttled, along with the FSB
- HDD must go inactive and at low power drain
- Display, but you stated 35%

Now, that said:

If you are running the same apps in both installations, see if the HDD activity is similar. If not, then some of the services are enabled on the x64 that were not in the x86.


Finally, if you are wondering about the measly 2.5GB vs. 3, it is because you enabled discrete graphics in the BIOS. Disabled, you're closer to 3

 

I have found that ReadyBoost does wonders dropping the HDD activity. Same with turning off Superfetch

And I run my Firefox and OpenOffice off a RamDrive, and have mapped (symbolic link) my AVG8 log folder to the RamDisk, as well

 

How fast does your hard-drive spin? I bet that's it.

 

1.) I was hoping BitLocker wouldn't be that big of a culprit but I guess it might be... which sucks, because I really wanted to keep it on. I go to college and bring my laptop with me every day and I'm mainly worried about the potential of it getting stolen and having any of my personal data accessible.
2.) Yeah, I had all of those installed.
3.) I'm pretty sure I got all of the Lenovo drivers installed, except for the Intel chipset and Intel Wifi drivers. Of course, it looks like Lenovo finally updated their drive packages for Wifi to match Intel's so maybe I can switch back to that.

Thanks for the suggestions though. I guess I should do some performance tests with Bitlocker vs. no Bitlocker.

Yeah, I've got all that installed.

I've actually got the Hitachi 80gb. I did forget to mention that the 320gb drive I got was the Seagate 7200rpm, which is supposed to have among the lowest power ratings for 7200rpm drives. I know this is going to result in a reduced battery life, but it seems like ~2 hours is just excessive.

I've also made sure that software wise, it's identical between both installs, including the power plans. If anything, the power plan I use in the x64 install on the 320gb is even more tweaked towards battery life than the one on the Lenovo preinstall. I actually can't help but wonder though if maybe Access Connections does make a difference somehow as well.

Yeah, I know why it's only using 2.5gb... it's just aggravating, because I would almost be tempted to use the 32bit install if so much of the memory wasn't being used by 32bit addressing. I play games and use the ATI card semi-regularly so it's just too much of a pain to have to disable it in the BIOS.

It's making me wish that Lenovo had offered all of their Vista installs with x64 and I would have gotten Home Premium x64 instead. I already had a spare Vista Ultimate disc so there was no point in spending all the extra $$ on another license, and I need Media Center so Business is out of the equation. Alas, oh well.