Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Really Horrible Battery Life :(

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Really Horrible Battery Life :(

    Hello,

    I have been having issues with the battery life on my laptop ever since upgrading to Kubuntu Jaunty. I'm getting around an hour and a half at best, and I find myself charging my laptop every night when I never had to.

    I have a Gateway M7315u laptop, which is less than a year old. It came with Vista Premium, and for the entire time I've had the laptop I've been dual booting Vista and Kubuntu, because I am in college and the classes I am taking require Windows unfortunately.

    The machine used to dual boot Vista and Intrepid anyway, as I've since removed Vista and allowed Kubuntu to take over the entire drive. I've not regretted it, other than the battery issue. Vista and Intrepid never had an issue with battery life, but Kubuntu Jaunty eats the battery faster than I've ever seen. It usually uses (I'm guessing) somewhere around three minutes of battery life for every one minute spent on battery. With Vista and Intrepid I got around 3 hours, with Januty I'm getting an hour and a half, if I'm lucky.

    I posted over on the Ubuntu forums, and their suggestions helped a little bit. I installed and ran powertop, and I followed every suggestion it mentioned. (Even going as far as not using my wireless mouse anymore, which I've always used and never had it cause a battery life issue). I've checked the system monitor and nothing seems to be hogging CPU or memory. I've disabled unnecessary services. I've disabled compositing. I even run on "Xtreme Powersave" when I'm not plugged in. Each power setting usually only gives me 1-4 more minutes of battery life.

    The weird thing is, this happened when I changed the entire drive to Kubuntu. I really don't want to install Vista again because I hate it and Kubuntu has all the programs I need and enjoy using, so there has to be a way around this. Any ideas?

    #2
    Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

    My guess would be that you still have a couple power-robbing applications running in the background, which Powertop should show.

    One difference may be that VISTA let the HD go to sleep when it wasn't being used, but it is always spinning when you run Kubuntu. See this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869425 for ways to allow the HD to sleep when not being used.

    Dittos with the wireless connection. Another problem could be that Kubuntu is periodically checking the DVD to see if a disc has been inserted. I am don't have any solutions off the top of my head. You can Google for solutions to those problems.

    For those running a laptop there is info and settings in laptop-mode.conf, which is under /etc/laptop-mode


    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

      Originally posted by GreyGeek
      My guess would be that you still have a couple power-robbing applications running in the background, which Powertop should show.

      One difference may be that VISTA let the HD go to sleep when it wasn't being used, but it is always spinning when you run Kubuntu. See this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869425 for ways to allow the HD to sleep when not being used.

      Dittos with the wireless connection. Another problem could be that Kubuntu is periodically checking the DVD to see if a disc has been inserted. I am don't have any solutions off the top of my head. You can Google for solutions to those problems.

      For those running a laptop there is info and settings in laptop-mode.conf, which is under /etc/laptop-mode
      Those are some good points. I'll check that out. Is it possible that Intrepid did automatically suspend the hard drive? I believe it was all working fine in Intrepid...

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

        You may benefit from a google search using "increasing battery life in Linux"
        "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
        – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

          Even if a process isn't hogging CPU, it still might be enough to not allow it to throttle down to a lower frequency... have you watch your freq?

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

            I'm having the same problem. The battery life while suspended to RAM is also awful - Windows XP gives me maybe a day and a half, Hardy gave less than that, but still acceptable. I've now upgraded to Jaunty, and find that after about 7 hours suspended to RAM from full power, it's completely emptied the battery.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Really Horrible Battery Life

              I had the same problem on my Dell. I installed kpowersave and after setting some things in it I get better battery life. Hope this helps.
              Oneiric 11.10 KDE Version 4.7.4<br />Duo core 1.8 Intel<br />4 gig ram<br />Nvidia Go 7300 Graphics<br />Dell E1505 Laptop<br /><br />I&#39;m a happy pappy with Linux on my lappy!!!

              Comment

              Working...
              X