[ltp] T21 comsumes much more power than 600 and 560

Tue, 05 Jun 2001 19:03:03

In <3B1D3867.F7305CB0@tibco.com>, on 06/05/01 
   at 12:52 PM, Stefan Farestam <stefan@tibco.com> said:

>[Hi,

>[I'm a long time user of Linux on IBM Thinkpads, having used it on on the
>[560 and 600 models. Since a few months back I'm using  Redhat on a T21.

>[What surprises me is that the T21 comsumes dramatically more power than
>[both of the mother models. In particular, using the suspend mode I used
>[to be able to get a power comsumption of a few percent per day, the T21
>[however consumes almost 50% of the battery per day.

>[So, whereas I could just leave my old models in the standby for a week
>[or two, I now have to take caution each night that there is enough
>[battery to last the night.

>[Is there something that I have missed, some part of the laptop that is
>[not disabled when the machine goes into suspend-mode?

>[I also see decreased battery performance when running in normal mode,
>[but I attribute this to bigger display consuming more power.

>[Any and all ideas that could help me reduce the power consumption would
>[be most appreciated.

Hi Stefan,

The T20/21 are power consumers, they have a tendency to produce a great
deal of heat. One thing you should do if you haven't is get the most
recent BIOS. During deployment of these at my former place of work, I
remember there being some significant fixes to power management with the
BIOS updates. Our practice, learned from IBM, was to first revert the
installed BIOS to its default setup then run the update.

The other thing to confirm is that you are using the correct power supply;
I don't have the model number handy (see the support web site) but that
should be the 76watt PS. I do not recommend any alternative PS at all.

Then check your battery. In the past we used to "train" the TP batteries,
but I wonder if this is required so much these days. I never got a chance
to try Linux on these (this was a Windows shop) so I do not have first
hand experience with these but I have not noticed a major problem with my
770X. 

Lastly, try another power supply/battery if possible. You could have a
faulty power unit and converter.

Regards,

Bill Fullam
-- 
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wfullam@bellsouth.net
http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/~wfullam
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