[TriLUG] hp laptop power problem

[David Burton]

Well, laptop power consumption is going down.

LED backlighting (instead of CCFL) helps a lot with power consumption (and
is presumably much more reliable than CCFL), and the latest laptop CPU/GPU
chipsets (Intel B940 and AMD A-series) use significantly less power than
older ones.

During CloudCamp, I *twice* had to get up during a talk and go find an
outlet to plug in my 4yo laptop.  Ugh!  Partly that's because its
10.8v/4000mAh (6-cell) battery is starting to get a little bit weak, but
it's never been able to run more than about 1.5 hours from a battery charge.
 But the new B940-based ASUS that I have on order from Best Buy supposedly
can go *6 hours* on a battery charge (with the WiFi turned off), with a
6-cell battery.

The T2450 CPU in my old laptop has a rated max TDP of 31W, which sounds a
little bit better than the 35W TDP rating of the new B940, until you realize
that the B940 includes the GPU along with the CPU.

Plus, both CPU and GPU are waaay better w/r/t features & performance.  The
B940's Passmark score is almost 2.5x that of the T2450, and it is 64-bit and
has hardware virtualization support, neither of which are supported by the
T2450.  Also, the new B940's GPU (HD Graphics 2000) (3D-Mark 06
score<http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-2000-100.37994.0.html>=
3162) is
*much* better than the old Mobile 945 Express (GMA 950) (3D-Mark 06
score<http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-950.2177.0.html>=
132).

My guess is that about 15-20% of the improved battery life is probably due
to better batteries, but the rest is from lower power consumption.

All in all, that's pretty good progress over 4 years!

Dave


On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Alan Porter <porter at trilug.org> wrote:

>
> I had hoped that my laptop would be running ARM processors by now,
> instead of heating my house.
>
> --
> # ɹǝʇɹoԀ uɐl∀