Why are they power hogs

I am a new member to this site, and I am the proud owner of two AA1's. The 8.9 with a 160g hard drive, and 6 cell 4400mhz bat, and the new AA1 10 inch. I got the 8.9 for my son, for his schooling, and he is very interested in installing and using a Linux Distro. As of date we have tried EEEbuntu, which gave us very poor WiFi. We then tried Mint, and Mandriva. Both gave the 8.9 great WiFi, and everything worked out of the box, as the slogan goes. But what we discovered right away, with both of these Distros was that they were both power hogs, and the battery life was half of that running in it's default Windows. Since we liked Mint better then Mandriva, we have at this point, gone back to the Mint Distro. We are both very new the Linux world, but very interested in what it has to offer. I find it strange that an operating system that is suppose to take up less resources and run more effective then Windows could be such a power hog.

My question is, is there anything we can do to improve this, without having to do a crap loud of scripting, remember, we are noobys to this?

I am also open to a different Distro, that would offer us a similar experience to Mint.


Thanks.
4GibMe

P.S. As for the being Owner's of the AA1's, as the slogan goes, We're Loven it.

 

I had a 8,9'' and now I have a 10''. I use from a lot OpenSuSE and 11.1 on 8,9'' worked almost
everything out-of-the-box.
On the 10'' OpenSUSE 11.1 ( the last release ) works almost everything too, just a kernel and alsa
update is needed to make sound works and the wifi kill switch seems doesn't works ( wifi itself works great
but if you want to disable it, you have to do it from knetworkmanager ).
Everything else works great.
I'm very satisfied by OpenSuSE, I use it from the old SuSE 7.1

 

Thanks for the reply.

That is one OS we haven't looked at, and we have heard of it. We'll have a look into it and I'll post a reply to let you know how it went.

Cheers.

 

I just had a quick look at their site. It looks like the OS is a Pay-N-Play. The question is, is it worth the cost, and how much did you pay, and is it a yearly thing, or one time thing?

Thanks.

 

probably you saw the enterprise edition
look here to download and discover the desktop one. It's free

http://www.opensuse.org
http://software.opensuse.org/
http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org

 

fedora10 with the xfce desktop manager is another great option, there's a step by step guide that even newbie's can follow for installing it on the one and i couldn't reccomend it highly enough also the stock linux on the one is linpus lite which is based on fedora 8, and it could be a good option for your son as you can leave it stock and have an easy to use system or you can switch to the proper xfce desktop and have a standard distro

phil

 

First of all, Thanks for all the info, things are happening faster then I was expecting.

Lots of info, and lots to look into here. I will keep you posted on what happens.

4GibMe

 

Well, we tried the Open Suse, and like all the others, it to is a power hog. At this point in time we have come to the conclusion that they are all this way, and all we can do is wait and see what the updated versions are like in the future.

As for now, we have gone back to the Mint OS, only because it is one of the most newbie friendly Linux OS's out there. As for as it being a power hog, we'll comb the web for some patch jobs, but really, it will be about waiting for the OS teams bringing their versions into the 21st century to work more power savvy with laptops and netbooks.

But I must say, dealing with all these different Linux OS's has been a real eye opener, in regards to ones options in the world of computers without Windows. Linux in general has come a long way in a very quick time, in comparison to that of Windows. With Vista, a step back, really. The day is coming, and I can see it being sooner then later, when Linux in all it's flavors, will over take Windows.

Now that we have finished our shopping trip of different OS's, it is time to start learning about what makes Linux tick, and how to get the most out of it.

I would like to thank those that posted their help, and maybe in the future I can be of some help to others.

Cheers.

4GibMe.

 

What are you basing the idea of Linux being a power hog on? I mean are you comparing it to Windows and what are the indicators that tell you this?

 

At this point, Windows is the only bench mark that we have. But, what Ive noticed on my Aspire 10 inch running Windows is, that if your using a program that taxes the system, the battery life indicator drops much faster then doing next to nothing. I do know that there is a + - to the guess-temated time. So I plan to do some real time testing myself over the weekend, where I can run the 8.9 with a timer, from beginning to end. Both under Linux Mint, and Windows.

If all else fails, then I will trade the Aspire 10 inch Battery with that of the 8.9. The 10 inch came with a 5200mAh battery, and that would give the 8.9 at least and extra hour. All |'m trying to do is get the 8.9 through a full school day.

So once the real time testing is finished, I will post it for those interested in knowing.

And yes, I do intend to switch the Aspire 10inch over to, once all the our questions have been answered. I also have to see if I can port my be-loved Word Perfect over. But one step at a time here.

Thanks.

4GibMe.

 

A couple of things you might want to try:

1). Purchase a 9-cell battery for the 8.9" (I have purchased two of them off of Ebay - both shipped from China). Each ran me between $65-$70, but a recent check on Ebay looks like they may have come down in price a bit. These batteries have given me ~8 hours each using Windows.

2). Most LInux distros were not designed for the scaling capabilities of the Atom processor, so this is where your power drain comes in (among other things). I know that Ubuntu has released a couple of distros that are designed for Netbooks and MIDs. I believe both are still in beta right now, but reviews have been good so far (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... sage&num=1).

I hope that helps.

 

a 7 hour school day will need a 7800mah battery just if it's sitting idle with most all powersaving options on, as at idle the A150 uses just under 10W, browsing the internet and reading emails shoudn't mess with this time too much but if you use more power intensive apps, you'd need more capacity i'm afraid

as for most linux distro's not being able to use the cpu scaling on the atom, well that's utter tosh, in fact in the kernel there are three different scaling options or you can turn it off completely if you want, the ultimate in configurability then that's true of linux in general

phil

 

Thanks gentlemen.

Learning allot here.

To be honest, I am not much of one for online, or mail order buying. I prefer to spend my money close to home, putting it back in the system I am a part of. I was one of the lucky ones when I got my Aspire One 10inch. It came with a 5200mAh battery. For the now, my son and I have traded batteries, and this has given him couple of extra hours. I am on the road, but have better access to AC power then he would. So I can pack the charge in my case without to much of a problem, as a backup. I have tried my Computer dealer, regarding a bigger battery, but all he can get is the standard 6 cell. Which is an option, but it means packing two batteries around, which isn't really the best of ideas. For now, it's a case of, lets see what happens, then adjust as needed.


Cheers for now.

4GibMe.