[Gllug] Power consumption of Acer Aspire Revo

[John Winters]

I was slightly disappointed with the power consumption of my Acer Aspire
Revo (around 20W when idle) and I've been doing some experiments with
odd results.

Spinning down the hard disc seems to have no effect on power
consumption.  Running the CPU hard obviously increases consumption (up
to about 24W) but the oddest thing is that the lowest consumption is
achieved with gdm running - lower than if it isn't running.

If I leave the thing completely idle with minimal processes running - no
X and no gdm) then it settles at 22W.  If I then start gdm (and thus X)
the power consumption goes up to 24W whilst it starts and then settles
down again to 19W.  This is without the display blanking or anything
like that.  As soon as I stop gdm the minimum power usage goes back up
to 22W.  This is completely reproducible.

Why should a computer use less power with gdm (and X) running than without?

John
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug