Comments on: Windows 7 beats Ubuntu 10.04 on battery life

By: Physik Spiele

Physik Spiele — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:16:40 +0000

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:29:06 +0000

Hi guys! I am an quite new to ubuntu but I have previous experience with debian freebsd and suse. I do have an EEEpc (indeed, this is the reason how I found this post, looking for ubuntu battery problems). It is disappointing and odd, why more people are not discussing this issue. When I use command cat on the battery I read my battery has mHA 2000 when full charged while I am sure that windows charges my battery fully (4000 mHA). So there is an easy explanation: I cant find on internet any blog or post about how to make ubuntu charge my battery fully… but when I use windows battery charges fully. This is not the only issue: kernel of linux seems to use much more my cpu, the fan is always working heavily. but there is also a problem with my battery (which had never ever had a prblem whatsoever while using windows and literally overnight after installing ubutu presented me with the problem). I dont want to talk about conspiracies but… it would nt sound strange to me that someone in the high spheres had made a deal with amd, intel and the major computer manufacturer, so to introduce some little bug on the bios (laptop hardware). afterall microsoft is the biggest monopolistic company in the world…

By: iphonefamily

iphonefamily — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:31:49 +0000

i always wanted to buy a Linux laptop just to know what the fuss was about. looked up a Youtube video & i was impressed. too bad i dont know where to buy a Linux/Ubuntu laptop/netbook. Also i dont know how to install it ona windows 7 laptop and not f*ck it up. i hope this is a sign of great things to come for Ubuntu.

By: N

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:00:13 +0000

It already is a fair competition and Ubuntu lost.

By: M @

M @ — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:37:51 +0000

The problem is that Ubuntu’s ability to conserve power is directly related to how much it knows about its underlying hardware. Since there are no linux ACPI drivers for most laptops, windows has an advantage in power optimization. We just need a clever programmer to write those drivers and we’d have a fair competition.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 09:53:54 +0000

I know this is a bit old but i found it in a google search.

“its not because ubuntu is less efficient. it’s because the windows install comes with power management software specifically designed for the hardware it’s installed on. If you wiped it and put a fresh copy of windows without that proprietary power management software, I doubt it would still be a significant difference.”

WRONG, i have yet to see a notebook with any special battery saving programs. Its all windows.

I personally noticed a MASSIVE difference with my netbook going to linux i lost about 2.5 hours after tweaking i managed to get it to about an hour lost but laptop-mode-tools thrashes the crap out of my HDD and is known to do so yet nobody fixes it.

The other rumor is that ubuntu is somehow to blame, i can promise any of you spreading that baseless rumor that its complete nonsense. I have tested every major distro and can tell you with no doubt that its better than 95% out there in terms of power management.

By: Delvien

Delvien — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:34:10 +0000

Ubuntu is one of the most bogged down distros out there as of late.. an average of 200-400 wakeups per 10 seconds, versus most other distros sitting at 10-70. Plus the fact that ubuntu has a lot of services not even needed on a laptop that adds to the weight of the distro, and hdd access (hdd almost never sleeps or spins down)

Truly, ubuntu needs an overhaul, or a “light” edition, with all the fluff taken out. It’s a nice user friendly distro, but it’s way too heavy.

By: noss

noss — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:36:34 +0000

oh, btw, what i was more trying to point out in my post above was both my win7 and ubuntu installs are fresh installs, no additional power management software in either operating system, just the standard power saving settings.

as much as people don’t like to believe it, win7 has indeed come up with the goods power management wise.

By: noss

noss — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:33:18 +0000

a few months ago, i installed a fresh copy of win7 pro to my dell xps m1330, along with a ram upgrade and hdd upgrade to a wd 7200rpm black edition. i entirely expected battery life to be shorter, but win7′s power management is awesome! i went from 2.5hrs battery life on the 6 cell in vista to 3hrs 55mins in win7 x64 with more ram and more power hungry hdd.

i am also running a dual boot with ubuntu 10.04 32bit, and the battery life starts out at around 3hrs on the power meter, but the battery drops very quickly, power usage seems to be on par with vista at around the 2.5hr mark.

i’ve just ordered a 9 cell battery for the laptop and was expecting to get close to 5hrs with win7, maybe a touch more, with ubuntu, i don’t really know. the poor power management is the only thing i’m disappointed with so far, but to be honest, its a big thing!

By: JOhn

JOhn — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:39:47 +0000

Go here: http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/

Get eee-control and isntall it on Ubuntu…