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

[johngalt1]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeremy D Rogers" <>
To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Tfug] battery life, power management and 
windows vs linux


> On 3/21/07, Ranjan Grover <ranjan.grover at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Just a thought, but are both operating systems 
>> > accurately calculating the
>> > time left, or is one over/under estimating?
>>
>> Tha's a very good point. The real test would be to see 
>> how long the
>> battery really lasts by just leaving the computer idle 
>> till the
>> battery runs out and comparing it between windows and 
>> linux.
>
> That's true, I agree with both of you that the *real* test 
> would be to
> run the battery down and time it, but I just like booting 
> into windows
> for that long. :-)
> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the 
> impression that
> the modern 'smart batteries' do all the time remaining and 
> charge
> calculations internally and report via acpi. I was 
> therefor operating
> under the assumption that the reported charge / time 
> remaining was
> completely OS independent and based only on the 
> current/power drain.
>
> That said, I could see a case being made for not trusting 
> these
> semi-instantaneous values and I agree, the real test would 
> be to run
> it out on both sides.

Yes, as a Windows user at times, I can say Windows lies.

I say for a reasomable comparison from a full charge after 
discharge, test the time to power down for idle on both 
os'es plus the following:  Then, use a heavy system 
utilization, but os independent benchmark for each os.

If you want to make better and more complicated tests, then 
test each result of the last test with additional tests for 
each power intensive variable. Follow?