Horrible Battery Life on T61?

Does anyone have experience with T61 battery life? Current reviews seem to suggest horrible battery life which for some reason reviewers like PC mag/CNET have put almost no weight on.

This used to be the Thinkpad strong suit. Am I missing something here?

 

I think I've read that the 4 cell gets about 2 hours of battery life. Even with the biggest 7 cell battery, it's still not that great compared to its competition the Latitude D630.

 

Here is what you find when you type "T61 battery life" in the search tool: http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=1406238

 

Thanks Stallen. Should have searched before posting.

 

I've been there. I forget sometimes too.

 

charge it about 20 cycles, and it gets better.

 

Those rumors have actually been debunked. D630 battery is NOT better than the T61 if the battery sizes are the same. Battery life is similar.

 

I think the relevant factors are following:

1. The largest battery available for the T61 is 7-cell, which is rated ~65Wh. The old 9-cells were 78Wh, and IIRC Dells ship with 8-9cell extended batteries as well.

2. Last I heard, the Nvidia (quadro NVS 140M) graphics chip sucks 1-2 hours off of a full battery charge compared to the X3100 integrated graphics. One of the specs listed 7-cell w/ integrated gfx lasting 5.7 hours, and only 3.8hr with the Quadro.

What I'd really like to see are some configs running mobilemeter to give us an idea of the actual wattage draw during battery usage.

 

Well, since we're talking about battery life, I was assuming the biggest battery for each laptop; the T61 with 7 and the Latitude with 9. The latitude will have better battery life with a 9 cell, but if the batteries were exactly the same size, the battery life would be similar.

 

what version of windows are you running? I noticed a significant difference in battery life when i switched from basic to ultimate. The upgrade squeezed out an additional 25 minutes.