Ubuntu Laptop Battery Usage more than Windows Vista

[Andrew Farris]

> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Jatin Davey <daveyjatin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>         Hi all
>         
>         I am a new convert from Windows Vista to Ubuntu. While i was
>         using Vista
>         the Avg time that my laptop battery would run was for 1 hour
>         15 mins.
>         After installing Ubuntu it runs for a maximum of 1 hour with
>         the battery
>         fully charged. I am using Ubuntu 9.10 on a Toshiba A135-S2386.
>         Just
>         curious to know if i need to tweak anything to use the battery
>         optimally. Though i am satisfied with the support and the
>         usage of
>         ubuntu on my laptop just wanted to know if i am missing some
>         thing.
>         
>         Note : The battery usage was observed for over 3 weeks now.
>         
>         Thanks
>         Jatin
> 

I fixed your top-post for you Darshana...

On Mon, 2009-12-07 at 15:28 +0530, Darshana Jayasinghe wrote:
> Did u try saving power by changing CPU frequency? Laptops have a
> greater effect on frequency reducing. 

@Jatin: Another thing you can try is running powertop from a terminal
(must first install with a sudo apt-get install powertop, or through
synaptic) this program can, a lot of times, help you reduce the power
load of your system by turning off some unneeded services, suspending
USB ports, etc. when on battery. 

You can also check "System > Preferences > Power Management", and
configure your laptop to turn the monitor off after a certain time to
save battery, and to spin down hard disks when possible...which also
helps.

To monitor/configure your laptop CPU's frequency, look at adding 
the CPU frequency scaling monitor to your panel (right-click > add to
panel > CPR frequency scaling monitor)...this applet will let you know
what your frequency is, and let you manually change the mode your CPUs
are in (though this is usually automatically handled).

Lastly, if you're using compiz, consider cutting down on the effects, or
turning it off altogether, and use metacity's compositing instead, if
you just want the drop-shadows and stuff... running compiz means you
will use more GPU, taking more battery.

that said, even with compiz running on my new dell laptop, I still
regularly get about 3:20-3:45 on my battery, depending on what I'm
doing...and this is a standard battery, not a long-life one.

Hope that helps!

-- 
Andrew
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