Is it normal to get only 2.5 hours from a 6-cell battery ?

My machine is T60 14.1' , I only use wireless+word+firefox. CPU running at 1/2 peek freqency usually.

I saw some review saying 4 hours, 5 hours. How could they do that?

 

You could try turning down the screen brightness and see if that helps.

 

That was probably with the extended battery for the T series that sticks a little bit out the back. 2.5 hours sounds about right for a 6-cell running the apps you are. Try lowering screen brightness to the lowest level you can still read comfortably to increase battery life.

 

That doesn't seem too far off. I only got about 2.5-3 hours on my 6 cell doing light work (typing while researching in firefox, brightness 5/7) Sometimes the review gets optimistic. If you are concerned, try using another's 6 cell for a day and see what kind of life you get. I've also never matched those reviewers' somewhat *outrageous* claims.

As others have mentioned they could be using a 9 cell.

 

I'm getting a bit over three on my R60 with the screen on 4. There is the modular battery if you need more time. It is around $100 on the internet.

 

I got 2hours 15-30minutes on my T60p doing similar tasks. If I dimmed down the screen all the way (which is unbearable) it said I could get a little over 3 hours, but I never was able to run at that setting long enough to find out. For supposedly being great on battery life, the T series doesn't exactly live up and I was somewhat disappointed. I'll be getting the advanced ultrabay 3 cell battery ZaZ mentioned to get a respectable battery life.

 

I agree. I am also somewhat disappointed with the battery life. I was expecting 4 hours for a top-notch business laptop.

 

I for one think something is wrong with your settings. I get 6.5 hours with my 15" screen with my 9 cell if I do everything I can to save power. Doesn't make sense that 6-cell should be less than half. Launch the power manager (left click the green icon) and set all the settings when on battery to be towards saving power.

 

Li-Ion battery life T60 14 inch models:

Up to 6.0hr (standard 6-cell, integrated graphics models)
Up to 9.0hr (optional 9-cell, integrated graphics models)
Up to 4.3hr (standard 6-cell, discrete graphics models)
Up to 6.4hr (optional 9-cell, discrete graphics models)

According to the T60 brochure the battery life is dramatically affected by the graphics chip more than anything else. I've attached a copy of the pdf.

 

Good point, though I am running hte X1400 graphics card too.

Some non-basic things to check
Make sure you have all updates (using both windows update via internet explorer and the updater you get to by pressing the thinkvantage button, then clicking update my system)

Also, make sure you are running the latest BIOS (2.03). I found the BIOS gave me a 30 minute boost.

 

A laptop's graphics card matters.

I saw one Sony laptop SZ series? with dual graphics cards: one integrated, one dedicated. One for 3D performance and one for battery life. It is a very good design.

 

Do you mind sharing the list of things you did to save power?
It might help others when battery life is first priority.

 

The battery life will diminish markedly as the battery ages or it's been thru many cycles.

But i still get 2.5 hours on my 2-year-old t41 with its original battery which has around 400-500 cylces

 

On my T43 I get 3-3.5 hrs typically with my normal battery settings (min screen brightness, processor locked at low speed, wireless on). 15" SXGA Flexview with X300 graphics and 6-cell battery.

 

Well, I made my own power management profile. On AC everything is for the highest performance, on Battery I have set
maximum cpu speed: lowest, optimize fan control to: balance all parameters, display brightness: 0 of 7, lower display refresh rate: 40Hz after 1 minute, stop hard disk rotation: 30 seconds. The rest of the settings don't affect the battery usage as long as you are using your computer.

Also, I turn off that switch on the front that controls all of the wireless radios

Finally, going to start, all programs, thinkvantage, thinkpad configurator, I manually turned off infrared and the internal modem there since I will never use them. Finally, you want to make sure you've gotten rid of what I call active background processes. I.E. things that are not only open in the background, but actually doing something (like virus scanners that scan the computer whenever the cpu is idle).

One last thing, I guess this is a glitch in some software somewhere, but I find that I get significantly more battery life by either unplugging the laptop while on or by shutting down the laptop before I turn it on when on battery (i.e. when on battery, if I come out of stand by or hibernate, for some reason the computer uses about 2.5watts more than if I had turned on the computer from a complete shut down, which is significant).