Maximising laptop battery life

[Liam Proven]

On 8 February 2014 14:59, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> I have a friend, whose old laptop I've refurbished by maxing the RAM,
> replacing the failed battery, purging it of XP and putting in Linux on a
> new hard drive.
>
> Now, she's got some work assignments coming up to sit with disabled
> students in lecture theatres and use the laptop to type up lecture notes
> for them.
>
> My question is, will the battery last any longer using a simple text
> editing application such as gedit, rather than Libre Office?
>
> My reasoning is that Libre Office is huge overkill for the simple task
> of bashing words into the computer, and does loads more work such as
> figuring out proportional character spacing with every key stroke, which
> must takes loads more processor cycles to accomplish, and is completely
> unnecessary for the task.
>
> Is she likely to get longer battery life with a text editor rather than
> a word processor?

You've not specified specification, pre- or post-upgrade, so it is a
little hard to say.

Does it have enough RAM to run Ubuntu, LibreOffice & any background
apps without swapping to disk? If so, no, there will probably not be
any measurable difference. Swapping hits battery much more heavily
than most other things.


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