[Tfug] battery life, power management and windows vs linux

[Jeremy D Rogers]

On 3/21/07, Paul Lemmons <paul at lemmons.name> wrote:
> I was reading something the other day and ran across the link below. The
> current kernel runs "hot" all of the time; even when it is not busy.
> There is a project to make the kernel "tickless" so that if it is doing
> nothing it is really doing nothing. This appears to be directly related
> to improving battery life and helping keep laptops cool enough to
> actually have on your lap.
>
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/7749

Ooooh, now that sounds very likely to be a contributor to my problem.
I will be sure to try this out and let you all know how the battery
life changes using this kernel option.

I also was looking at the ATI config tool under windows and noticed
some interesting options like dropping bit depth and refresh rate when
on battery. Sounds like Sean may have been on the right track as well.
I did some checking on how much the (simple acpi reports) battery life
changes when changing the GPU clock freq and voltage using aticonfig
(part of the non-opensource fglrx driver). It only adds around 15-25
minutes of battery. I will try bit depth and refresh rate next and see
how much that helps.