[Laptop] Battery Time

[Jessica Mahoney]

Darren Pilgrim wrote:
> Jessica Mahoney wrote:
>> Quick recap:
>> Windows Vista: 2 minute boot, 90 minutes of battery
>
> What tuning did you do on Vista prior to your measurements?  A stock 
> Vista install never actually goes idle, so it eats the battery life.
>
> With FreeBSD if you run X with an alpha-blending WM and a background 
> process to continually keep the CPU 10-20% loaded and the disk active, 
> you also get poor battery life.
>
> Vista, when properly tuned, will get better battery life than Vista 
> because it can also turn off devices to save power.  FreeBSD lacks the 
> ability to power down USB, wireless and wired net devices, CD/DVD 
> drives, etc.
>
I had enabled everything in the Power Management panel in Vista (six 
dots for Power Saving, no dots for Performance), and had the flat panel 
at its dimmest setting.  With FreeBSD, I had the panel at its dimmest 
setting, average CPU load 2-5%, and had the CPU running at 800MHz.  I 
have no idea what the CPU clock was while running Vista, since there 
doesn't seem to be a CPU clock monitor in Vista.