Laptop Battery Usage

Scot L. Harris webid at cfl.rr.com
Tue Nov 30 15:35:57 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:13, Terry R. Grier wrote:
> I might be crazy... but as an ex-windows(xp) user with this laptop
> Last night .. I used the laptop with battery and it appeared that I got 
> almost an extra hour of it.
> 
> Does Fedora have anything to do with it ?  is that possible.. or ... I 
> am just crazy or got lucky?
> 
> Thanks
> T

Your crazy.  :)

Battery life depends on a number of things.  How old is the battery?  Do
you regularly use it until it is discharged or do you keep it in a
docking station or on AC power all the time?  Does your laptop utilize
speedstep to adjust CPU speed, fan speed, etc.?  Do drive the CPU at
100% all the time using setiathome or something similar?  Do you have
apm or acpi enabled?

All of these things will vary how long a battery will last.  I routinely
run my laptop on battery alone until it down to 15 or 12 % before
plugging in the AC power.  This keeps the battery from getting a memory
and degrading.  I originally kept the laptop in a docking station almost
all the time.  That battery quickly was reduced to a run time of less
than 30 minutes.  The new battery I routinely get 2.5 to 3 hours of run
time and have for close to a year now.  


-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation. 




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