Idle consumptions

This page reports the minimal consumptions of Thinkpads when idle. This means, in principle: minimum brightness, CPU and GPU at lowest speed, no wifi, hard drive spun down, no pcmcia cards inserted (see details of each entry).

This kind of information has several uses: comparing one's consumption with that of other people's setups, knowing which model to use as a gateway/file server, etc.

Model	OS	Remarks	consumption
600E PIII/450	Archlinux 0.8/xfce		9W
T41p	Ubuntu 7.04	Undervolted, fglrx, no dri; fan->+0.5W, powerstate=2->+0.7W, HD->+1.5W	8.3W
T43 (1871)	Debian (Linux 2.6.21, fluxbox)	DRI, alsa (power_save=1), with usb, no networking	10.1W (12.0W with HD)
T43 (2669)	Gentoo (2.6.20-gentoo-r5)	Undervolted, fglrx (powerstate=1), DRI, no alsa, no usb modules, no networking	12.7W
T43 (2686)	Fedora Core 6 (2.6.19.x patched)	Undervolted, radeon, rovclock -c 125 -m 130, no DRI, ALSA power_save=1, no usb modules, no networking, min brightness, HDD spun down	15W
R50e		Lid closed	14W
X60	Ubunto 7.04	Wireless kill switch on, min brightness	10.2W
X60s	Debian Etch	2.6.21 tickless kernel, processes tweaked with powertop, usb/fw unloaded, hd spun down, min brightness, ipw3945 set to powersave mode 7	8.3W
X60s	Debian Etch	2.6.21 tickless kernel, processes tweaked with powertop, usb/fw unloaded, hd spun down, min brightness,ipw3945 unloaded	9W
T60 (2007)	Fedora Core 6	Wireless kill switch on, 1400x1050 panel @ min brightness, fglrx (powerstate=1), HDD spun up (~1W saving without)	16W