Lenovo T400 battery problem.

[psom]

When im on vista my battery last for 6 hours but when im on ubuntu it only last for 2.5 hours. Whats the problem??

Thanks

Psom

[lenlinuxfan]

I can't speak about Ubuntu (don't have the experience with it).  I have installed OpenSUSE 11.1 on other Lenovo systems (R61, X300) and in its case there are a number of options that you control that help (or hinder) your battery performance.

I would check if you have a Power Management module and if so, what are its current settings, particularly in terms of what to do with the display (brightness, dim) when running on battery, time before the screensavers kick in, etc.

At a more macro level, did you install Linux as a 'vanilla' install (meaning with ACPI enabled and such)?

Lastly:  So that other participants can provide more help than what I can, please provide details on your hardware as well as your OS (release, kernel level, etc).

Good luck.

[tarzan23]

Powertop is a great util, which will tell you which options to enable for decent batter runtime (USB autosuspend, laptop mode...). But i still do not get below a power consumption of about 13-14 watts.

Currently i am running (X)ubuntu 8.10. I will ditch this hell of a distribution soon for something that actually works, without broken smb and nfs and all the other bugs in 8.10. It's really a shame...

Message Edited by tarzan23 on 02-01-2009 05:34 PM

[garytr23]

For me, running an SL300, gnome battery monitor reports about half the time that it should.  I get about 2 hrs runtime according to it, but in reality it lasts about 4, the same as vista.  Powertop shows a more accurate number for me.