thinkpad t400 and battery life

English Hardware
#1

Hi All,

Am running opensuse 11.2 along with windows vista on my thinkpad t400 - which has the ‘switchable graphics’ capability. The switchable graphics does not work on linux, but I am seeing large differences in the battery life too.

I get about 2 hrs of running time on my 9-cell battery when I am running Linux, whereas with the ‘performance’ mode in windows vista, I get almost 4 hrs (3 hrs 48 mins). Switching to the energy saving mode in vista gives me just over 5:30 hrs running time.

Any suggestions on how I can change things around to get more life on opensuse?

Thanks in advance.

#2

Hello,

in general “powertop” is a good tool to find out, how much your system consumes of energy and what are reasons for that.

It’s a tool from intel, maybe you’ll have to install it via Yast and then just run “powertop” in console. In addition, there’s also an informative website LessWatts.org - Saving Power on Intel systems with Linux and last but not least (because it’s a thinkpad) you maybe find some information at ThinkWiki

Regards, pepun.