[sclug] Under(re)volting - How does MS do it?

[Roland Turner SCLUG]

On Wed, 2007-02-28 at 22:52 +0100, Pieter Claassen wrote:

> So, the question is simply: How come Microsoft manages to get around 6
> hours out of this battery (urban legend) while the best I can do (after

CPU halting and screen dimming? Spinning down the HD?

(As Alan suggests: you do have empirical evidence that 6 hours is
actually possible, right?)

> manually disabling wireless, unloading USB drivers, enabling laptop
> mode) is only 2 hours? Yes, I know P=V^2/R which I suspect that even a
> minor drop in board voltage will have significant power gains. However,
> everything I read warns me against patching the kernel for undervolting
> because of possible hardware damage (motherboard not chip).

_Hardware_ damage? That seems rather unlikely.

Are you confident that you don't have some background process that's
keeping the CPU and/or hard drive drawing more power than necessary?

- Raz