[Power] Impacts of disabling Automatic Power Management

[Sridhar Dhanapalan]

On 1 February 2012 15:43, Paul Fox <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
> sridhar wrote:
>  > We are considering disabling Automatic Power Management because of its
>  > impact on collaboration and 3G connectivity.
>  >
>  > What kind of battery life can we expect from an XO-1.5 with Automatic
>  > Power Management disabled as opposed to enabled? I understand that
>  > this can vary wildly with usage, but is there an average estimate?
>
> he's on a very long plane flight, but i'll try and channel richard:
>
>    "it depends."
>
> how did i do?  :-)

I was trying to head that off with my "I understand that..." statement :)


> you're probably in as good a position to answer this as we are, since
> you have a better idea of your system activity load.  with automatic
> power management turned off, a 1.5 is good for several hours of use,
> where "several" is intentionally vague.  backlight on full?  wireless
> on?  continuous cpu activity?  etc.
>
> would it help to disable automatic power management only when specific
> Activities are running?  only when certain kinds of collaboration are
> in effect?  only when certain drivers are active?

We've been thinking of doing this for when 3G connections are active
[1]. It might be interesting to also tie this into Sugar's
collaboration mechanism and disable power management when a session is
active.

Sridhar


[1] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/1029



Sridhar Dhanapalan
Engineering Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia