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Intel Releases Several Projects to Help Save Power
GeekyBodhi writes "LessWatts.org is Intel's new website that hosts several power saving tools. As Linux.com reports, it also shares tips and tricks to help optimize power consumption on hardware from portable devices running on batteries to large data centers. 'LessWatts.org is not about marketing, trying to sell you something or comparing one vendor to another. LessWatts.org is about how you can save real watts, however you use Linux on your computer or computers.' As reported on Slashdot earlier, this isn't the first time Intel has tried to help Linux users cut their power bills. In May, the company launched the PowerTOP program that monitors individual processes to keep track of power consumption. The project comes at a time when more vendors are pre-installing Linux on handhelds and laptops." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.
It looks to me like it's just a relaunched version of Intel Powertop with better marketing behind it.
Regardless, Powertop actually is a useful tool, and it's helped me get much better battery life out of my T61 running Ubuntu.
eclecti.cc
There is a lot of good info on Toms Hardware Guide. A PSU listed as 'high efficiency' is %75 efficient. Toms showed several at %85 or better. And some as low as %60. And that is on total power, so big gains here.
I did on my dual boot laptop (Lenovo T61). Under Windows with no tuning etc, all radios on, power consumption was 12W. Under the latest Gutsy (32 bit tickless kernel) with no tweaking and same screen brightness consumption was 18W. Turning off the physical radio switch reduced consumption by 1W. Doing all the powertop suggested tweaks brought things down by another watt. (Incidentally there wasn't much difference between the 32 bit tickless kernel and the 64bit tickfull kernel suggesting that most power consumption is in the various peripherals and devices).
Basically Windows consumed significantly less power than Linux (about 30-40% less). From the lesswatts site it is good to see that more power saving will be in the Linux kernel in the 2.6.24/25 timeframe (eg SATA power saving) as well as user space (eg not polling SATA cdroms every 2 seconds looking for media changes). I guess we'll be seeing those updates in Hardy Heron.