I’ve been playing around with powertop trying to reduce power usage. I’m using laptop-mode to spin down the disk when its not needed (it automatically activates when on battery power). I’ve also added these two powertop suggestions to /etc/rc.local
# Reduce the frequency of disk flushes echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs # Turn off the SATA link whenever possible echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
I’ve also enabled CPU frequency scaling. If I dim the brightness, the laptop uses around 16W of power under light usage: amarok playing in the background and browsing the tubes. It guesses this will give around 3 hours battery life. Not sure if I can make it better…
Hey,
Your blog about linux on the Q320 has been very handy. I’m now playing around with powertop and laptop mode as well… I have dimmed the backlight to 15%, CPU scaling is on and is set to 1.2GHz. I have also entered the two entries above into the rc.local. Powertop is estimating 2hrs (13W) when browsing alone… What settings (if any) did you adjust to enable you to get 3hrs battery life whilst browsing and running amaraok?
Cheers
September 21, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
Hello,
I got a Q320 aswell. I got to say 3 hours is still not very much. On Windows Vista the laptop gets 5 hours playing a video with the standard accu!
I got to say that ubuntu completly disappoints me in this point. I bought this laptop with its expensive LED Display to have those accu rates and I get about 2-3 hours on Linux. :-(:said:
Why can’t we get the 5-6 hours which vista achieves?
Bye
MPW
October 31, 2009 @ 12:43 am