[Cumbria] FAO: Anyone with laptops...

[Schwuk]

Whilst there have been comments made about desktop environments, Windows as
a desktop etc...

I (currently) have one major gripe with Linux - it's power control. Under
Windows XP, my laptop (a Toshiba Portege 4000) will happily run for about
three hours with modem usage. I don't know about LAN as if I am plugged into
a LAN I am generally plugged into mains as well. Using (builtin) WiFi under
Linux, I only get around an hours usage before the battery has dropped to <
50% and the screen has darkened. Windows usage with WiFi > 2 hours (I think).

I do believe that part of the problem is that the current kernal supports
APM, and most modern laptops use ACPI (which is still experimental in the
kernel and will not be improved until 2.6)

I have a couple of questions:

1) Does anyone know how to improve battery performance (replies telling me
to switch off WiFi will be directed to /dev/null).

2) Does anyone know how to get 'apm -s' (standby) to work for a normal user
(i.e. not  root)? I think it may require a kernel re-compile, but I want to
confirm this before I try.

I would also love to get hibernation working (one of the benefits of XP)...

Cheers,
-- 
Schwuk