Horrible Battery life with CM7 on 3g/4g

I'd like to chime in here because I fall in the camp of deflating battery life quickly
I've tried lots of different roms (AOSP and Sense), different kernels, different radios, different governors, and lots of combos therein.
I never get as good of life as others.
I have noticed a few improvements.
I have used juice defender and 2x (currently on 2x).
I turn them to never check unless screen on. I decided I check my phone often enough to get the info I need with a data connection without it going out and looking.
Just yesterday in the main CM7 thread I found out about checking 'partial wake' in battery history in spare parts.
I have an exchange account using enhanced email and it was set to 'push'. It was causing my phone to be awake even if the screen was off.
My guess is it remains checking for some period of time after screen off and this accumulates over time. I notice my 'awake' time has dropped off a lot.
If I put the phone in airplane mode and leave it for the night it won't budge but maybe 1%.
With data off but cell standby on, it would drop 10-15% just sitting there with the screen off.
So last night with the partial awake issue silenced I tried again with cell standby on, data off. It was better at about 5%.
However, reviewing the usage this morning I was kind of expecting the awake time to have followed the screen on time.
BUT there was a rather large chunk in the middle of the night when it was awake. It wasn't a steady interval.
I'm using the latest 2.11 radio and seem to get great signal.
Based on what I've said above does any one know what caused the awake time in the middle of the night?
Is this the signal being to weak? (despite it being in the same spot)
Anyway, the more I read about battery life and what I've seen I think the actual cell and data signal are the main culprits.
We might be running the same rom, kernel, governor, and radio and get completely different results with similar usage.
I think the tbolt just doesn't handle poor signals well and really chews it up if you are in an intermittent to poor area.

here's what has worked best so far that gives me enough speed and I feel satisfied with my use.
CM7 1.6.1, tiamat 1.10 kernel, interactive governor, 2.11 radio and min/max cpu set at 268/1036 MHz.
I run 2X battery and have it shut off unless screen on. It has a new option that it won't turn on unless you unlock the lock screen.
This lets me check to see if I have texts without grabbing data.
I had an issue with enhanced mail going partial awake even though I told it to never check mail unless I sync.
It was working but the latest update messed that up.
There are still programs and/or services that are waking my cpu when I have screen off and data off.
Ideally (for my needs) I like to only have texts and voice calls available when the screen is off.
I would want everything else shut down. I check my phone often enough to get the data I need when the screen is on.
In my mind this would extend my battery life quite a bit.
From what I can tell in battery statistics, the awake hits I'm getting are network usage by the android system.
It SetCPU an app that will allow me to prevent apps from running in the background when the screen is off?
Thanks