battery consumption

A lot of people seem to complain that batteries discharge faster in Linux than in Windows. Is this a fact? And if so, how can that be? As for me, I seem to get about 2h out of a thinkpad R60 under normal use, with integrated graphics and a 1024x768 display. Although it seems to be low, I don't know how much it would be in Windows though.

 

From what I have seen in the past few weeks, most have come to a consensus that the battery life of Ubuntu compared to Windows is about the same.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=108615
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=118211

It all depends on what you do really (like what is said in those two links).

 

It also depends on your hardware. With my old Acer (SiS everything, Sempron Mobile CPU) I gained about an hour over windows. However, with my current Inspiron 6400, I lose about 30 minutes, down to about 3.5hrs.

 

If you have dedicated graphics, you are likely to lose battery power because GPU throttling either doesn't work at all, or is not as good as in Windows. I think newer chipsets and processors have throttling issues as well because it seems as if Micrsoft is trying to integrate everything about a computer into Windows, including ACPI and BIOS.

 

On a random note, I think the future of dedicated mobile GPU lies in part with hardware throttling, which I don't think exists (or if it does, it's pretty weak).

 

I know ATi cards in Linux can use the same "speedsteps" as in Windows, but you have to control it from the command line.

 

what about nvidia cards? gf7600go here. running sort of hot - i'd suppose it would be cooler in win /tho I haven't really checked/

 

ATI and Nvidia are hotter in Linux than in XP, just because X Window is heavier than Windows. Maybe that's part of reason X-Windows nowadays looks faster than Windows.

But some of people are sloppy. They mostly forgot Linux is mostly for desktop, and prefer performance rather than power saving. So by default, Linux will choose On demand no matter what condition. For laptop usage, you have to tweak a bit further to get similar battery life. The simplest way is use gnome power panel to set power saving when it is on battery, just like Windows did. There is a deeper way to auto set "On battery" option. Just matter of knowing what to do. The same action needed on dimming the screen. Windows did this automatically, but Linux doesn't yet.

 

GNOME dims my panel automatically when on batteries, it always has, as far as I can remember.

 

It really just depends on the laptop model, and how "not broken" it's ACPI configuration is. My screen has been auto dimming since Ubuntu 5.10.

I get comparable battery life to Windows with Feisty Fawn, and all my media buttons and whatnot are now automatically configured. Feisty improves over Edgy in these areas.

Unfortunately, at the moment under Linux, my processor can only go either the full 1.83GHz, or 1GHz. Nothing in between.

 

Hey Lysander, are you using Intel based CPU? Mine is AMD Turion and configured using powernowd and cpufreq-select. I guess that's the different or maybe there is more. You can add in frequency step and transition table in frequency setup.

My desktop and laptop both have four freq stages.

 

Yeah, Im using using a Core Duo. It's a conformed issue, but I don't mind, as long as I can max my battery out.