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I would actually like to know, what is a good Laptop for Linux? The
Laptop I had before battery life wasnt that great and sound didnt
work. On the Toshiba Satellite that I use now I am having to use
Windows XP because my TrackPad doesnt work and sound doesnt work. Can
someone point me in the direction of Satellite drivers for Linux?<br>
<br>
Mike Mueller wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="midE1AVDNG-0002z7-00@maynard.mail.mindspring.net">
<pre wrap="">On Saturday 13 December 2003 09:56, Jon Carnes wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 19:50, Phillip Rhodes wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Anybody have measurements on how long a battery charge lasts using
Linux on a laptop?
What I conclude from reading this is that Linux control of ACPI ...
well ... er ... sucks right now. I'll continue to research this, but
if anyone has information to the contrary I'd like to see it.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Mike,
I don't have any data for you at the moment, but if it's really
important to ya, I could generate some. I've got my laptop configured
to dual-boot RH 9 and Win2K Server, so I could easily do a comparison
and chart out the battery life times... As it happens, I can't really
speak to the battery life under Linux, as I'm usually near an AC source,
and have never let my battery run all the way down...
TTYL,
Phil
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">I have an interesting story that is along those lines. I bought some
old Laptops for $25/each (old Toshiba P233's) and to test/retrain the
batteries I charged them up and then ran them out a few times using the
current OS, Win98.
I thought the batteries were in fairly bad shape as they wouldn't hold a
charge for longer than about a half hour.
I installed Mandrake 9.1 and RH9 on the laptops, and while at a clients
ended up having to run them off batteries - they each lasted over 2
hours... which I found to be fairly amazing.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Agreed. For that class of machine - probably using APM. 4-6 hours is my
expectation for brand-new laptops.
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">From the very beginning the BIOS settings have been set to use maximum
power for CPU, disk, and screen.
My guess is that the Win98 was hitting the disk quite often (for reasons
unknown) and that ate up the power. The apps I was running on Linux
basically read the hard drive on start up and then ran fairly well right
out of RAM.
Anecdotal evidence...
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
My old Presario was running ME when the new replacement battery would not
last more than 45 minutes. I wish I had paid more attention to battery
charge management when I was running Mandrake 8.1 with the original equipment
battery.
I noticed that the Knoppix distro on my new Toshiba used and found the APM
routines. I don't think APM can control screen brightness so the screen
stays on high intensity all the time. With the Toshiba Power Management tool
under XP I see controls for display intensity, display on/off, cooling
scheme, CPU speed, HD, sleep, and hibernate. It's reasonably predicable that
the new Toshiba running XP will last longer than the same machine running
Linux.
The Toshiba Toolset also had a configurator that distinguished 3 user groups:
road warrior, student, SOHO. Those distinctions got me thinking. If Linux
lags in the battery charge management arena, then that critical student group
which values maximum charge preservation will opt away from Linux and that's
not good for Linux on the desktop bacause the desktop class is being replaced
by laptops.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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