Portable Low Power Machine

The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop is the
battery issue.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.

I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
port of my desktop PC.

One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22, and I was wondering
if it is possible to use a laptop while keeping the hard drive from
spinning up. (Or is the main power draw the processor?).

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

Searcher7 wrote:
> The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop is the
> battery issue.
>
> I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
> hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.
>
> I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
> occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
> port of my desktop PC.
>
> One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22, and I was wondering
> if it is possible to use a laptop while keeping the hard drive from
> spinning up. (Or is the main power draw the processor?).
>
> Thanks a lot.

The hard drive is pretty far down on the list of top consumers. The
number one draw is probably the LCD screen. You can affect that a bit
my adjusting your brightness -- there are probably function keys for that.

Second and third are probably the CPU and GPU. You could probably
underclock the CPU to throttle its consumption, but you'll give up
performance. I'm not sure what can be done about the graphics processor.

They are tiny, and my big monkey hands cannot abide their keyboards, but
netbooks are purported to have impressive charge times.

Searcher7 wrote:

> The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop is the
> battery issue.
>
> I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
> hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.
>
> I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
> occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
> port of my desktop PC.
>
> One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22, and I was wondering
> if it is possible to use a laptop while keeping the hard drive from
> spinning up. (Or is the main power draw the processor?).

You could replace your HD with a SSD.

Make sure your power-save options are set up, to include slowing down
the CPU. Turn off your WiFi and Bluetooth transmitters.

Searcher7 wrote:
> The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop is the
> battery issue.
>
> I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
> hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.
>
> I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
> occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
> port of my desktop PC.
>
> One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22, and I was wondering
> if it is possible to use a laptop while keeping the hard drive from
> spinning up. (Or is the main power draw the processor?).
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> Darren Harris
> Staten Island, New York.

There's a program called speedswitch that lets you fine-tune
power save parameters.

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

I've used it, but never done any controlled experiments to
determine if it helps battery life.

Remember, that if you slow the processor by a half, you'll save
much less than half the total power...but it'll take twice as long
to do stuff. So, you lose. If it's mostly waiting for you
to hit a key, you may gain.

Turning the HD on and off will increase its failure rate.
Ditto for your display backlight.
Got no data on whether that matters over the useful life of
a laptop. Older Thinkpads had a reputation for backlight failures.
You could tell it was on its last leg when the screen had a red tint
until it warmed up.
Don't know if that applies to yours.

Customers want big, bright displays, lots of horsepower, light weight
and long battery life. Manufacturers make tradeoffs to hit the center
of the market. Don't expect that there's anything you can do to
dramatically increase battery life.

You can get more "useful life" by paying attention. If you spend an hour
daydreaming while you type a 10-minute memo, you're
wasting power. Wake it up, type
for 10 minutes, put it to sleep, daydream for 50 minutes.

Best option might be to get a laptop with two battery slots and hot swap
in the third and forth as needed.

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 09:15:53 -0700 (PDT), Searcher7
<Searcher7@mail.con2.com> wrote:

>The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop is the
>battery issue.
>
>I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
>hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.

It always starts with a system that is designed to be
particularly power miserly, and has a large battery.

Typical configuration would be a larger-sized netbook, Atom
CPU, a 1280x800 10", LED backlit screen, and the high
capacity battery option. You could go with an SSD instead
of mechanical HDD if you don't need so much storage space
but often the cheapie SSDs on netbooks have some sluggish
performance in many multitasking, concurrent I/O scenarios.


>
>I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
>occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
>port of my desktop PC.
>
>One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22, and I was wondering
>if it is possible to use a laptop while keeping the hard drive from
>spinning up. (Or is the main power draw the processor?).

It all adds up, but the hard drive is one of the lesser
consumers of power in a laptop. Plus, if it's running
windows you'll find that windows likes to incessantly access
the hard drive anyway, even if you just let the system sit
"supposedly" idle, so letting it spin down would ultimately
result in it just spinning back up again.

If you need to get best life out of the laptop you already
own, see if there is a higher capacity battery available
(through a trusted major brand, some of the generic
batteries claim a little higher capacity but with same
number of cells and don't deliver much of any difference, if
even performing as well).

If your current battery is over a year old and used
frequently you may find improved runtime by buying even the
same capacity battery new again.

The other options are the obvious ones, using the OEM power
management app to tell it to run in battery mode, with CPU
at lowest speed, optional things turned off when not needed
like a modem, wifi, and setting screen brightness as low as
you can tolerate. None of these things makes nearly as much
difference as the first suggestion, a big netbook with the
largest battery it can take... which can bring runtimes of
5-7 hours or longer.

Taking a 2nd battery pack along is the other option, or even
fancier would be a higher capacity DIY battery pack that
plugs into the AC-DC adapter socket, though this approaches
becoming a less and less conveniently portable laptop.

> Searcher7 wrote:
> >
> > I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
> > hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.
> >
> > I'm just studying programming, doing some word processing and
> > occasionally run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into a USB
> > port of my desktop PC.
> >

"JR Weiss" <jrw@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:h83i9n$62s$1@news.eternal-september.org...

> You could replace your HD with a SSD.

An early model Asus Eee may meet the OP's needs. These
came with only solid state memory (about 10 Gb, no hard drive)
and Linux the only OS. For market reasons, HDDs and WinXP
were featured in later models. The demand for long battery life
(say more than 4 or 5 hours) appears to affect the hardware market
(the range we find in the stores) but much less than the supposed
demand for entertainment features nowadays supplied with
laptops offered for business use.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"Don Phillipson" <e925@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:

>> Searcher7 wrote:

>> > I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of
>> > hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.

>An early model Asus Eee may meet the OP's needs.

A later model would likely be better. I have an Eee PC that was one of
the early models (2G Surf netbook with a 7" screen) and it only gets
around 2.5 hours (surfing with the wireless on) battery time.

>These came with only solid state memory (about 10 Gb, no hard drive)

This one came with a 2G SSD.

>and Linux the only OS.

And it has the Xandros Linux OS.

>For market reasons, HDDs and WinXP were featured in later models.

Yes, the 2G Surf is extremely limited. I later bought an EeePC 1000HD
(XP, 160G HDD, 10" screen) because it was so much more versatile. And
the battery life was over double the 2G Surf..

>The demand for long battery life (say more than 4 or 5 hours)...

And the new netbooks are now getting even better on battery life
though you can't always believe the inflated claims. YMMV always
rules...

>appears to affect the hardware market (the range we find in the stores)

My local Best Buy today sports around 10 netbook models of various
brands. It wasn't that long ago that there were only 1 or 2. The
public spoke and the MFGs listened.

> but much less than the supposed
>demand for entertainment features nowadays supplied with
>laptops offered for business use.

People are sometimes disappointed finding out that the cheap netbooks
are not as powerful as the full powered laptops. But times are a
changing...

BTW I still take my 2G Surf on trips because it does everything I need
and is very tiny and light (2 lbs). I just throw it in the suitcase
with the underwear for cushioning... ;)