What eats battery power?

[Harold Johnson]

Hi all,

I'm wondering which apps and processes typically eat up laptop battery
power.  (I'm sure this doesn't make a difference, but I'm running
Xubuntu a Mac PowerBook G3.)  I'm running a very old machine, and it
probably wouln't run multimedia very well anyway, so I'm thinking of
staying away from that type of stuff altogether.  The Internet,
however, is something I can't keep away from, even though I know that
wireless connections burn battery power fairly well.  Browsers don't,
though, do they?  Or *do* they?  I haven't installed Flash in Firefox
yet, for this very reason; I suspect Flash would eat up my battery
fairly quickly.  I've even switched my Gmail view to basic HTML,
hoping this might save battery power.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Harold