Laptop power consumption

[tom66]

Run this:



cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state


Whilst the battery is discharging, and report back your power consumption figures.



present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: discharging
present rate: 1897 mW
remaining capacity: 2713 mWh
present voltage: 11235 mV


Oddly, mine only reports about 2 watts idle, is this normal? I was able to push it up to 4.3 watts by playing a game on max detail (Blood Frontier), running super PI to 2^25 digits, turning on the keyboard backlight, turning on the WiFi and turning up the screen brightness, but it still seems way too low...

[LowSky]

yeah thats way off

[koleoptero]

My laptop battery shows a discharge time of several thousand days. So I assume that all these are not very reliable.

[tom66]

Still, it does accurately give my battery life of 2.5 hours.

[The Toxic Mite]

Still, it does accurately give my battery life of 2.5 hours.

2:30 hours = total bull-honky :|

[tom66]

What do you mean? Vista shows the same. And Dell said it has about 2.5 hours life with basic battery on there specification sheet.

[bodyharvester]

i get the no file or directory message. this is supposed to be entered in the terminal, right?

[mikewhatever]

i get the no file or directory message. this is supposed to be entered in the terminal, right?

The command is cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state in may case. I'd also suggest using powertop for a more reliable reading.