asus-ul30 team mailing list archive

["Charles 'Buck' Krasic" <krasic@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have the UL30VT-A1.

Battery design limit is 84 Wh.   Mine currently reports about 79 Wh at 
full, or capacity of 94%.

Some notes on my configuration:

- Ubuntu 9.10, with 2.6.33 kernel from ubuntu ppa.  I find this obviates 
the need for the
  backports wireless driver.
 - I load nvidia_g210m_acpi (with my changes to fix suspend/resume 
behaviour) on boot (rc.local)
   Since nvidia doesn't work yet, I never run with it enabled.
 - I blacklist the modules for the webcam and bluetooth (to save a 
little power).
 - I tend to run with screen brightness low most times (20%), 
occassionally I'll boost to 50 or 60%
   if sunlight is an issue.

I run powertop most of the time.   I have seen usage values as low as 
5.7 watts (screen on 10%, and wifi off).   In my usual mode (screen 20 
or 30%, wifi on), powertop (also history in gnome-power-manager) reports 
maybe 6.5-8W while just typing or light web-surfing.    Given the 
battery total of 79Wh, that suggests about 12hrs max.  Of course, doing 
any serious work (compile, etc.) will drive usage up as high as 15W, 
which means 5hrs.    I'd say around 7-8hrs per charge is realistic, 
although that's just a guess.   The gnome-power-manager seems kind of 
useless at compensating for time spend in suspend, and I never work more 
than a few hours without suspending, so it's not easy to pinpoint the 
precise  hours of use on any given current charge.

I have noticed one very suspicious thing with ACPI power usage and 
powertop.   I have never ever to my recollection seen powertop report 
more than 10 hours of life.   I strongly suspect the ACPI code has a 
limit coded, so that it adjusts the wattage reported upward as necessary 
to match a 10 hour limit.   In other words, when the battery is fully 
charged (79Wh), it always seems to report battery level / 10 W for the 
first hour or two.

Other things.   Battery drain during suspend is fairly significant.   
Overnight, I probably lose 5-10Wh, which is on the order of 30-60 
minutes battery time.


-- Buck


On 10-03-27 08:28 AM, Albert Vilella wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Can people report on battery life for the VT models? Please specify
> battery life using integrated graphics card
> or discrete nvidia card, battery size and configuration details (powertop, etc).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cheers,
>
> Albert.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~asus-ul30
> Post to     : asus-ul30@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~asus-ul30
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>