Long Lasting Linux Laptops?

[jabr at blu.org (John Abreau)]

"Mark J. Dulcey" <mark at buttery.org> writes:

> 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.

I did select apmd during the install, and I regularly use both suspend
and sleep-to-disk successfully. 

> 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.

Hm. I'll have to look into this.

> 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 haven't noticed any difference in battery life since starting to use the
cdpd modem.

--
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
Email: jabr at blu.org / URL: http://www.blu.org
ICQ#28611923 / AIM abreauj
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