Thinkpad T420s Owners' Thread

[sugarkang]

Did you read my other post on this subject? (I now have a more plausible solution for the 10 hours - a second bay battery.)

Hey, John. I read your post. You said about 7 hours at 50% brightness and no wi-fi? What's battery life like with Chrome/Firefox and wi-fi? Your best guess?

[John Ratsey]

Here is some useful information on ClearType and other font rendering options under Windows 7:

Engineering Changes to ClearType in Windows 7 - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

The three parameters mentioned are for pages 2-4 of the tuner. The first page is for RGB (left) or BGR (right) striped sub-pixels. Your text image indicates that you chose BGR (perhaps in frustration). Your display is most likely RGB striped. My eyes adjust fairly quickly to the different text samples, so I just chose the top left option for all four screens. YMMV.

You can use the Snipping Tool to view the underlying color characteristics of the different text samples. For example, the rightmost text sample on the third page has no color at all - it's completely greyscale.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that - yet another thing to study. I've just fiddled a bit more and things are looking a little better. I've also gone into the Intel Graphics properties and dropped Gamma to 0.9 so the greys become a bit blacker.

Hey, John. I read your post. You said about 7 hours at 50% brightness and no wi-fi? What's battery life like with Chrome/Firefox and wi-fi? Your best guess?

Last evening I was testing my new bay battery and didn't close any of the open programs. Firefox had about 15 tabs open plus other programs were running. At half brightness the power consumption was 11 to 12W. That would suggest 5 to 6 hours with both main and bay batteries being used. Note that I use FlashBlock with Firefox to stop unwanted animated Flash from unnecessarily using power.

Hope this helps.

John

[Kaso]

Last evening I was testing my new bay battery and didn't close any of the open programs. Firefox had about 15 tabs open plus other programs were running. At half brightness the power consumption was 11 to 12W. That would suggest 5 to 6 hours with both main and bay batteries being used. Note that I use FlashBlock with Firefox to stop unwanted animated Flash from unnecessarily using power.

One of my associates (whose name is not John Ratsey and who has a "real" job to focus on ) uses her T420s "normally" and reports around 4+ hours with bay battery and 3+ hours without bay battery.

[John Ratsey]

One of my associates (whose name is not John Ratsey and who has a "real" job to focus on ).

I expect my next "real" job to start in 2 -3 weeks. It will take me far from the Thinkpad support network. In the mean time my current job is to get to know my T420s and try to ensure that it is fit for work.

John

[sugarkang]

It was very helpful, John. And also supremely disappointing.

[John Ratsey]

It was very helpful, John. And also supremely disappointing.

If you want light weight and a long battery run time then something like this is ideal. There's a limit to the speed at which the hardware can drain the battery however hard you push it. That's a bit like driving a small car with a very small engine.

Alternatively, something like the Toshiba R830 with a 9 cell battery will give you better run time with less overall weight. However, you sacrifice some display real estate, have to put up with a keyboard from a lower league and may need to protect your ears against a noisy fan (which still doesn't stop the CPU from throttling to manage the heat).

Life is full of compromises. My current solution was to get an extra bay battery. As noted above, the Ultrabay Battery II 43R9250 works fine and is more reasonably priced than the newer Ultraby III battery.

John

[Manu_]

One of my associates (whose name is not John Ratsey and who has a "real" job to focus on ) uses her T420s "normally" and reports around 4+ hours with bay battery and 3+ hours without bay battery.

That doesnt make any sense. The main battery has a capacity of 43 Wh, the ultrabay battery 31Wh. This means going from just the main battery to main+ultrabay will increase the battery life 31/43 = 72%. So if you'd get 3 hours on just the main battery, you'll get 5+ on main+bay.

I use my T420s normally (pre-configured power plan "Power source optimized", and my battery definitely lasts longer than that.

[Thors.Hammer]

I use my T420s normally (pre-configured power plan "Power source optimized", and my battery definitely lasts longer than that.

What are you seeing for battery life?

[david1274]

the Toshiba R830 with a 9 cell battery will give you better run time with less overall weight. However, you sacrifice some display real estate, have to put up with a keyboard from a lower league and may need to protect your ears against a noisy fan (which still doesn't stop the CPU from throttling to manage the heat).

Sold!

[Manu_]

What are you seeing for battery life?

I'm using main + bay battery and get about 5.5 hours while working on my laptop. When I'm just browsing I get like 8 hours.