Extending battery life has been the holy grail of mobile computing. But can solid state hard drives really help?
Recently, the trend is going towards solid-state storage. This means drives that have no moving parts. Most popular of these is flash memory. They’re cheap, durable, and can hold data even without power (unlike volatile RAM, which loses data when power is off). Since flash memory can allegedly reduce consumption caused by spinning hard drives, some manufacturers have switched to using solid state drives for their mobile computers. There are also flash-based hard drives meant for notebook computers that users can replace their existing drives with.
The Asus Eee MyPC sports a flash-based hard drive, instead of a conventional spinning one. One factor may be price (since a small flash drive is cheaper than a micro-sized hard drive with spinning parts). One may be power consumption.
However, a simple test done by ZDnet blogger Robin Harris has rendered results that may run counter to the argument that a solid-state drive helps extend batter life.
The maximum power difference between a flash drive and a 2.5″ disk is 3 watts. If you average about 3 hours battery life, a flash drive would save at most 9 watt hours (wh). That’s 29 minutes with a 55 wh battery. Less than 20 if it isn’t seeking constantly – and less than 10 minutes if the drive spends half its time in standby mode.
The biggest power sink in my notebook is the “everything else” that stays on when nothing is happening – 13 watts. Next is the CPU when it is busy. Then the display if you keep it above minimum brightness, the DVD/CD player and finally, just above Wi-Fi, a busy disk.
Flash drives have a real advantage in shock resistance over disks. But the performance is about the same as a disk, the power savings minimal and the cost disadvantage huge. They make the most sense for premium ultra-light notebooks with low power CPUs and small screens as well as hand-held devices.
I guess I must add that speed is one of the advantages of flash-based storage over a disc-based one. Still, I’d like to get more juice out of my Eee’s battery.
Bringing an Asus Eee PC around is really a huge convenience. Our favorite miniscule mini-laptop started this whole netbook thing. With the dawn of these affordable and slightly underpowered and undersized notebooks, everyone suddenly decided to take this whole portable computing thing seriously. I don’t think I’ve seen that many laptop or netbook toting people before, and that’s a good thing.
And that’s the keyword here. Portable. As much as we want to bring our computers with us everywhere we go, there’s a bit of a limitation with carrying our laptops around – how in blue blazes are going to print our documents when needed?
Of course we can upload our files to dropbox, our webmail accounts, or some other cloud storage solution, and go to the nearest internet café to have it printed. And we all know that internet cafés aren’t available everywhere. We may not even have an internet connection – wifi, 3g or otherwise – available to use for uploading our Word documents.
This is why some people opt to buying a portable printer so they can print almost anywhere they want. Of course, it means that they’ll have to bring extra stuff like the printer, paper, and, in some cases, inkjet cartridges. I doubt portable printer owners would bring laser printer toner cartridges around because that would be ridiculous – there are no portable laser printers just yet.
Of course, being portable, these printers would be subject to a few corners cut here and there to ensure that it’ll be light and compact enough to carry around anywhere. You’d lose some features like duplex printing, the clarity of printouts used with Brother printer toner cartidges, and of course I doubt you’d be able to use these gadgets for heavy-duty printing. However, if you need to have hard copies of your documents handy, it won’t hurt to carry one of these babies along with your Asus Eee PC.
The Asus Eee PC 1015 Netbook is a great option for anyone who needs a small and quick computer to transport around with them, or for Mac users who find they want something that is Windows compatible as well. Whether searching for web hosting reviews or doing that day’s work while relaxing in a coffee shop, you will enjoy this netbook’s speed and efficiency.
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Using any kind of laptop means you’ll have to take care of it to keep it in a good condition, and this often extends beyond wiping it with a rag every now and then – in order to maintain your netbook in an optimal condition, there are various procedures you could apply, say, every month, to get the best results
For example, a common problem with these devices is the accumulation of dust – what’s worse is that it can build up on the inside as well. It may not be noticeable in the beginning, but if you notice your netbook overheating a lot more commonly than it used to, maybe it’s time to undo those screws and clean the dust from around the fan.
Never take out the fan itself though – damaging it could cost you dearly as it’s sometimes difficult to replace. Don’t even think about doing something like oiling it – this will never end well. Just blow all the dust from around it and close the netbook. The more experienced among you may find it a good idea to replace the thermal paste on the heatsink every now and then, but unless you really know what you’re doing don’t go for that.
Also, consider how you’re using the netbook as well – if its fan hole is on the bottom, never lay it flat on a soft surface, like your bed. This would suffocate it and prevent it from cooling properly, degrading the quality of its cooling in the long run.
As a freelance web developer, you keep learning new tricks and useful information on a daily basis – and if you’re crafty enough, you can easily design a strategy around which to work and achieve your goals as quickly as possible (so that you can take up more work and progress). However, there are some important details relevant to the job, which sometimes get missed by even the more experienced ones. Go through the list below and make sure you match every criteria! More »
These are real-world tests. I didn’t use any burning software, but instead did my usual day-to-day work, which involves Gmail, reading via my feedreader (Bloglines Beta), reading up various blogs, and also posting on blogs. And as such, being a real-world test, this involved some pauses in between for bathroom breaks, snacks, and such. And so you would notice a few minutes of “sleep” time in between, where I would close the Eee’s lid to save power.
This was done on an EeePC 900 12GB running (the OEM) Windows XP, updated to SP3. Brightness was at 30%, with WiFi on and audio muted. Note that I had turned off wired LAN in my BIOS, since I didn’t need to get wired, anyway. Camera was also turned off via EeePC tray utility.
Battery is the stock 4-cell battery rated at 7.2V, 5800 mAh.
Here are the results:
2:39 p.m. – Cold boot. Windows usually takes about 30 seconds to launch and another 25 seconds until SSD reads stop.
2:46 p.m. – Sleep. Sudden torrential downpour. And we have laundry hanging outside. And so I had to run out to bring the clothes under cover. Sigh. That’s working at home for you!
Uptime: 7 minutes.
2:59 p.m. – Wake up. Back to work. Am at my desk now, so I’m actually working on my bigger laptop at the same time.
3:31 p.m. – Auto sleep. Read a pretty long email on the bigger laptop, so I somehow left the Eee idle for 5 minuets–which is the idle time I’ve set Windows power management to put the machine to sleep.
Uptime: 32 minutes.
3:39 p.m. – Wake up. It’s a battery test, after all, so I’ve turned the Eee back on again to do some reading up on relevant forums.
4:37 p.m. – Sleep. The Eee actually spent another 5 minutse idle. Damn those long emails.
Uptime: 58 minutes
4:39 – Wake up. 5:55 p.m. – Sleep. No more rain. Brought clothes back out. Not that there’s any sunlight to help dry them faster, but it’s something one has to do.
Uptime: 76 minutes.
6:06 p.m. – Wake up. Battery meter is saying I only have less than an hour left.
6:23 p.m. – Battery LED is flashing LED.
6:32 p.m. – Windows is giving the critical battery alert. I figure I could still do a post, and I publish an article I’ve been writing on Blogging Pro.
6:39 p.m. – Power down.
Uptime: 33 minutes.
And so adding all those uptime minutes, we come to a round sum of 206 minutes. This translates to 3 hours and 26 minutes or roughly 3 and a half hours.
Strangely, that’s exactly how long BatStats estimated the 5800 mAH Asus battery to last.
A thread on the EeeUser forum details how some (or most?) EeePC 900 units drain battery even when turned off.
I was just wondering if anyone else has been having this same problem. Now when my eee pc 900 is fully charged and i leave it for a couple of days not using it the battery still drains when even not in use.
And I agree that this is a serious reliability issue. For many people, the Eee serves as a mobile work machine, and for some, as a travel companion. Some just turn on their Eee for a few minutes to check on email and read news, and then off again. But if you lose 10% to 20% of your charge each day then you’d have to plug it in often, which beats the purpose of having a portable computer with a three-plus hours battery life.
I have yet to test this on my machine, but I’m curious to know how Asus will deal with this. Is this perhaps just a BIOS issue? Or is this a battery issue?
One of the main complaints–at least by some users–with the Asus EeePC 701 is that the system is by default under-clocked to run at 630 MHz instead of the full 900 MHz capacity of the Celeron-M 353 that powers these little wonders. So several tools have been developed to let users set the clock speed (and fan speed, etc.) as desired, such as Eeectl. Some even overclock their EeePCs.
Just recently got my hands on an EeePC 900, which supposedly ran on the full 900 MHz speed. Some have expressed worries that running on full speed would cause quicker battery drain. Remember that being a Celeron-M, the Eee’s processor does not have SpeedStep. This means it cannot dynamically adjust clock speed depending on processor use.
But I realized that the 900 automatically switches clock speed (yes, clock speed, and not just throttle speed) when you switch between battery and AC power.
If you have an Eee, you can check this with CPU-management tools. In my case, I used RMClock (for Windows).
Plugged in:
On battery power:
On some machines, the computer would start at the full 900 MHz when you power up the computer on batteries, and would not switch to 630 MHz unless you plug it in and remove the plug afterwards. This could be a real pain, especially when you’re mobile. The latest BIOS update should solve this.
The Eee 900 running at 630 MHz on battery power surely saves on consumption! I believe the EeePC 900′s 5800 mAh battery is rated to run at about 255 minutes or more than 4 hours. I have yet to verify this for myself, but I’ll be doing my own real-world tests soon.
Competition is getting intense. Looks like the subnotebook market is the next big thing for gadget makers. Computerworld is quoted as saying there is yet another company that plans to venture into the cheap (meaning inexpensive) compact notebook market (currently dominated by the Asus Eee).
The company is Norhtec, a systems integrator based in Thailand, of all places, that specializes in tiny servers. The company is working on what they call the Gecko Laptop. The tiny system will be built by Quanta, and is powered by Linux Lite from Linpus Technologies.
The laptop probably has a seven-inch screen, possibly smaller. It has a pretty big keyboard and a touchpad. It’s powered by a Via C7M ULV chip. Not much else is known about the Gecko.
According to reports, the company will announce the laptop soon, and it will sell for less than $300.
The Asus Eee PC currently faces some competition with various similar-sized alternatives like the XO, the Intel Classmate PC, the Everex Cloudbook and (for some) even the Apple Macbook Air. And recently rumors have it that Acer is planning an ultraportable release.
Here’s another rumor: MSI might come out with an ultraportable of its own. Via HLWT:
MSI looks like it is going to utilize Intels new 45nm Diamondville processor for its rumored ultraportable. The new Intel processor has been specifically engineered for low power portables but it looks like MSI may be the first out of the gate with an actual product with this new chip inside. The Diamondville will be officially announced in April yet but MSI has already gave word that when the chip is “ready” then their own project will be “ready”, too. Expect the new MSI ultraportables to be in the market by July or August this year.
Smallest MSI notebooks I’ve seen so far are sized 11-plus inches. So I think they won’t be far behind in developing an ulraportable close to the size and specs of the Eee. Question is–how soon?
