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On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, John Abreau wrote: > I'm running Linux on a Sony Vaio C1X with a Novatel Wireless Merlin > cdpd modem, and I love everything about this machine except one thing: > the battery life really sucks. It came with a "3-hour" battery which > lasts just about an hour, so I it the bullet and bought the "6-hour" > battery, which lasts about two hours. > > I find this frustrating enough that I'm almost considering replacing it, > if I can find something with a reasonably long battery life. What kinds > of battery life do you find on your laptops? What's the longest actual > battery life you've seen in a laptop? First question: do you have APM installed on your laptop? (Note: neither RedHat nor SuSE comes with APM on by default.) Battery life is going to be terrible without it. Your laptop will also run cooler with APM enabled, because Linux will actually halt the CPU when it's not doing anything (typically 80-90% of the time), and the hard disk will spin down after being idle for a while. It also helps to change your cron settings. The defaults will keep waking up the HD as the system checks for crontab changes. I don't remember the details right now. And it's not clear anything will help if you insist on using the CDPD modem. Many PC cards are power hogs, and anything that transmits is likely to be an especially bad hog. Depending on the design of the modem (whether it can be powered down when not in use), APM may or may not help. I can actually get close to four hours out of my HP Omnibook 5000. True, that is with TWO Li-ion batteries installed... but each one does deliver the two hours it's supposed to. On the other hand, the thing is a crufty old P90 with a measly 800x600 256-color display. -- Mark J. Dulcey mark at buttery.org Visit my house's home page: http://www.buttery.org/ Visit my home page: http://www.buttery.org/markpoly/ - Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).
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