Maximising laptop battery life

[Doug]

On 02/08/2014 10:05 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> 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.
>
>
One would think that a solid state hard drive would use less power.
(But I don't know.) Also, that an XFCE or LXDE desktop would use less power.
Perhaps someone reading here knows those things.
--doug