Standby Mode: How long will it last?

[Arnie]

I recently acquired a new ThinkPad T61 (2.2GHz, 2GB, 14.4" screen,  Win XP-pro etc.) and have found that even with a fully charged battery, the standby life is not more than 2-days. Is this normal? My previous T21 and A21P would go -and still do go - for 2-3 weeks on Standby.

[Arnie]

So, with all these people on this furum with T61's, can no none tell me how long a T61 can typically last on Standby, starting with a charged battery??

I get 2-days at most. Is this about right?

[Arnie]

I guess everone's too busy asking their own questions, but I'll give this post one more try:

Could someone tell me how long a T61 should typically last on STANDBY?  (Starting with a fully charged battery.)

T7500, 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM.


Having switched to a T61 from a T21, I find that usually the battery will go flat in 2 days or less, when left on standby. On my previous Thinkpad 2-weeks was possible. Is this correct? Is the T61 more power-hungy on Standby?

Thanks.

[carbon_unit]

Apparently no one that has read your thread uses standby for that long, including me.
I believe standby is meant for short term use, days not weeks. If you are worried about battery life for that long why not use hibernation or just shut it off?

Edit: Yes, the T6x series is more power hungry all around than the T2x series.


Message Edited by carbon_unit on 04-17-2008 05:28 AM

[Arnie]

Thanks for the reply. I was more interested to see whether there might be a problem with Standby on my T61, given the much shorter life than what I'm used to on older machines. If only the memory is supposed to be powered on this mode, then even given that this T61 has about twice the RAM I had on my T23, the duration seems a lot shorter. Yes, I could use Hibernate, but that doesn't seem much quicker that just re-booting from scratch. At the end of the day at work, I sometimes just like to close the lid and pop the laptop in my bag. Sometimes I use it again at home and was surprised to find that the battery level would have dropped by 20 or 30 % in just a few hours.

[njr]

I've no idea how long it "should" last, but I closed my lid on Monday night and re-opened it on Wednesday morning to find that the battery had gone from 100% charged to 61% - so it would probably last about 3 days, roughly similar to yours it seems. Cheers.

[Bajpai]

Not very long, especially if you lug it around, in standby mode

All this experiment is great, however, I have a word of caution for anyone new. Just make sure when you put your machine in standby mode don't transport it around any more than perhaps moving it from one room to other.

In standby mode several circuits, are pretty much active and quite aware of time/clock. So if there is a scheduled task to be performed, the processes could pretty well attempt to get your machine out of slumber. At that time if you prancing about the college with the ThinkPad bouncing in your back-pack, it could be pretty bad news for the hard-disk, even with all the protection that Lenovo provides.

And remember many a software -- including Vista -- setup these scheduled tasks even without your knowledge.

These issues generally don't occur (though there are exceptions that you can setup in BIOS, like wake-up alarms) in hibernate mode. So you could carry your laptop, place to place, wrong side up, while it hibernates.

As far as answering how long does my T61 remain in standby. When I'm not carrying it around she's always on standby when not in use. I guess it would be happy to stand by in light slumber, for about 4 days -- with 7 Cell battery.

Actually I remember my Acer 5672 used to tell me in its battery setup application how much power is remaining for standby, how much in hibernate.

Message Edited by Bajpai on 04-18-2008 03:16 PM

[Arnie]

Interesting to hear that certain things stay awake in Standby and that scheduled tasks can run. Probably, then, why then it doesn't last as long as my previous T23 or A21 etc. I have a 6-cell battery and 3 days is realy tops. Mostly, 2.

I've been carying it everywhere in standby. Guess, I'd better stop then.

[Bajpai]

That T61 consumes power in stand-by mode, does not come to me as a surprise, because the RAM still remains active, and all the information there needs power to retain it. This is normal for all laptops.

However, what had surprised me quite a lot was when I realised that it manages to drain battery at quite a clip, even in hibernate.

I had always understood hibernation as being a state when windows would quickly write the entire content of RAM on the Hard Disk and turn off the machine completely. However, either Vista or Lenovo or both have rewrittern some of these rules, because T61, drains battery at fairly noticeable rate.

There does not appear to be any way to plug the drain in hibernate, even though I have turned off wake up on LAN and other features which could have been draining the battery.

I guess it is all a matter of trade-off.

There is thread about this somewhere in this forum.

[tholen]

Bajpai wrote:

> However, what had surprised me quite a lot was when I realised that it manages to drain battery at

> quite a clip, even in hibernate.

Power usage while hibernating is precisely the issue that brought me to the ThinkPad forums. I've had personal experience with a 755C, a T23, a T42p, and a T43p. All would cease using power while hibernating. Indeed, if you left the machine in standby mode for too long, it would automatically hibernate to prevent the battery from being completely drained. Thus I was surprised when a T61p used a considerable amount of power while hibernating. Because this behavior is so contrary to my previous experience with other ThinkPad models, I was concerned that my T61p was malfunctioning, and my primary reason for joining the ThinkPad forums was to ask whether other T61p owners were also experiencing significant power drain during hibernation, in hopes of finding out whether it really is a malfunction or a "feature". It appears that at least one other owner (of a T61) has noticed the problem, but that's not a large enough sample, so I'd like to solicit feedback from other T61p owners. I've measured the drain at about a half watt, meaning that a 56.16 Wh battery would be exhausted in about 100 hours, and there's nothing the machine does to prevent the battery from being completely drained, which can be damaging to the battery. The hardware manual for the T61p says that hibernation mode turns the power OFF, which is clearly untrue or else my T61p is malfunctioning and should be repaired under warranty. Which is it? As far as I am concerned, there are two possibilities here: either the machine is malfunctioning, or else the T61p will be my last ThinkPad.

> I had always understood hibernation as being a state when windows would quickly write the entire

> content of RAM on the Hard Disk and turn off the machine completely. However, either Vista or

> Lenovo or both have rewrittern some of these rules, because T61, drains battery at fairly noticeable

> rate.

It's not Vista, because the battery is also drained with Windows XP as the operating system. It's beginning to look like Lenovo rewrote the rules, though for now I'll allow for the possibility of a malfunction or maybe even a software bug. Could a BIOS update solve the problem?

> There does not appear to be any way to plug the drain in hibernate, even though I have turned off

> wake up on LAN and other features which could have been draining the battery.

I went through all the BIOS settings in hopes of finding something that might be causing the T61p to be using power while hibernating, and one setting that appears to be new since the T43p is the ability to have your USB ports remain powered while the machine is off. However, that option was disabled on my T61p, and apparently is supposed to work only when the machine is powered by AC, so even if it had been enabled, the USB ports should not have been the source of the battery drain (nor did I have any devices attached to the USB ports). As for plugging the drain, actually there is a way, but it's a nuisance. After you enter hibernation mode, remove the battery. If you're worried about having to carry around the laptop and the battery separately while hibernating, don't, because I have determined that I can reinstall the battery immediately after it's been removed without the power drain being restarted. Whatever it is that is consuming power apparently gets shut down when the battery is removed and stays shut down when the battery is reinstalled. What I would like to know is: what is consuming power in hibernation mode? I've noticed no ill effects from removing the battery while hibernating to stop the power drain; the machine comes out of hibernation mode just fine, as far as I can tell.

How could the T61p have possibly earned the EnergyStar logo when it consumes that much power while supposedly turned off? And it doesn't protect the battery from being completely drained. As far as I am concerned, that's a design flaw. And Lenovo technical support couldn't tell me what the power is being used for (though I was offered the choice of escalating the matter to a higher level of technical support, for a fee, of course). This whole issue has left me very annoyed with Lenovo, which is why the T61p will be my last ThinkPad, unless Lenovo can fix what I perceive to be a problem. For now, however, Lenovo won't even acknowledge that there is any problem.