EEEPC and emacspeak - battery life and screen off tip

[Greg Priest-Dorman <priestdo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks, 

Just a quick note as I begin to see trends.

I am useing eeeXubuntu.  It is a 7.10 xubuntu distribution with the
modification needed for wireless and such on the eeepc already in place.

I am working on a web page about it at

http://www.cs.vassar.edu/people/priestdo/wearables/herbeee

I was dismayed to discover the light was on when I was typing
(with a usb chorder) with the the lid closed.  The command that finaly
did the trick was

	sudo vbetool dpms off

and to turn it back on

	sudo vbetool dpms on

If you issue the "off" command, you can have the lid open and type.
The backlight will stay off until you issue the "on" command.  You
will likly want to modify the scripts under /etc/acpi/ do make it do
what you want, lid.sh is a good one to start with.  

I have been running emacspeak with outloud and at the same time I have
espeak announcing the battery level and uptime every 10 minutes.

With the screen off, wireless off and starting with the internal
battery reporting 90 percent to 100 percent charge, I have let it run
untill it dies.  I would not recommend running it that way, I just
wanted to know the full battery life.  I am getting right around 3
hours and 30 minutes of emacspeak working time on the internal battery
alone.  Then over the subsequent 4 to 10 minutes it will die.  Total
run time 3:34 (shortest) to just over 3:45 over a series of runs.

Over the run time I am reading, listening to a few mp3 files, writing
and some of it the machine is idle.  I am not suspending or hibernating
the machine over these tests.

I have repeated this enough that I think I can trust the 3 and a half
hour time and the 7% point as a good time to turn it off, plug it in,
or hibernate it.  (xubuntu's battery meter can run commands when the
level gets to two user set points.  I have not yet bound hibernate to
6% but I think I will.) 

I have not tested this with wireless up and active but now that I know
about the 7% mark, I will begin to do wireless testing.  Once I have
some numbers I will report what I find here.

More as I have it,

-Greg

-- 

 Greg Priest-Dorman
 priestdo@xxxxxxxxxxx


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