Laptop Battery Times Low With 8.04

[nexus_2006]

Hello again. Since I installed Hardy Heron my discharge times have gone from nearly four hours to only 2.5. Any ideas about why or how to fix it? It is very annoying. I was previously running Dapper Drake. -Matt

[hermes0710]

What model is your laptop?

[nexus_2006]

It is a Dell Latitude D820, only about 2 years old now. Core 2 Duo 2.00 ghz, 2gb ram. I have noticed that the wifi light is now on all the time, I can't seem to turn the wireless off with the switch. Could that be decreasing battery life that drastically?

OTOH, I just had my first successful linux experience with hibernate, nice job guys!

[hermes0710]

You should install powertop and run it through a terminal. It's a useful application that shows which processes "consumes" more power in order. Try it to figure out

[nexus_2006]

Here is my output from powertop. Is it normal to have 60% of the usage be kernel interrupts? It also appears that Amarok uses quite a bit of power/CPU time just sitting there, not playing any media. How good a suggestion is it to disable 'hal' as well?

[hermes0710]

I really don't know. You can try the suggestions by powertop (you must run it with root privileges: sudo powertop) and see if the battery lasts longer. ps>You can see that the wireless driver is not in the list

[nexus_2006]

True, but I was under the impression that by its being on and scanning, it uses noticable power. I need to figure out how to get the card to go off and on, as I don't use it very often.

[hermes0710]

You can right-click on the "network" icon in the system tray and untick "enable wireless" to stop searching

[nexus_2006]

That did it, thx. Now to see if between the two, battery times come back.