Laptop power use: Windows vs Ubuntu

[AJL]

Some time back during the Linux/Windows wars the comment was made that
Ubuntu used more power than Windows. It appears to be true (in my case
anyway). I recently came into possession of an inline AC power meter
so I tried a few experiments. I have 2 laptops that dual boot Windows
and Ubuntu 9.10. In this experiment the batteries are out and the
desktop is up. Admittedly not very scientific, but interesting (to me
anyway).

Acer 15" 5516: Vista-25W Ubuntu-29W
EeePC 10" 1000HD: XP-16W Ubuntu-18W

The following is for Bill if he's still here:
I was surprised at the power draw of my 2 Eees when off. The 1000HD
sucked up 3 watts and the little 2G Surf a whopping 5 watts. (That
compares to the 15" Acer at less than a watt.) Also the 2G Surf draws
17 watts in the above test (at the desktop). So my 10" Eee with the
120G HDD draws less power than my 7" Eee with the 2G SSD. I told you
that 2G Surf ran hot...

 

[BillW50]

In news:j1rap55cthlpd7mu3ariiurfhj7apea6k5@4ax.com,
AJL typed on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:58:49 -0700:
> Some time back during the Linux/Windows wars the comment was made that
> Ubuntu used more power than Windows. It appears to be true (in my case
> anyway). I recently came into possession of an inline AC power meter
> so I tried a few experiments. I have 2 laptops that dual boot Windows
> and Ubuntu 9.10. In this experiment the batteries are out and the
> desktop is up. Admittedly not very scientific, but interesting (to me
> anyway).

I call them friendly discussions.

> Acer 15" 5516: Vista-25W Ubuntu-29W
> EeePC 10" 1000HD: XP-16W Ubuntu-18W
>
> The following is for Bill if he's still here:
> I was surprised at the power draw of my 2 Eees when off. The 1000HD
> sucked up 3 watts and the little 2G Surf a whopping 5 watts. (That
> compares to the 15" Acer at less than a watt.) Also the 2G Surf draws
> 17 watts in the above test (at the desktop). So my 10" Eee with the
> 120G HDD draws less power than my 7" Eee with the 2G SSD. I told you
> that 2G Surf ran hot...

Mine draws 10 watts without a battery. I never tested them off. But the
USB ports are still live when the EeePC is off and on AC power. My
Gateway laptops use 18 to 22 watts (I have four of them now)running
without a battery on AC.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 1 of 3 - Windows XP SP2

 

[Weavertech89]

i use ubuntu 10.04 now and have 3 1/2 hours of battery and it didn't
drain anything, on the same laptop I dual booted XP pro. and XP has
drain it in under 2 hours. Plus it also based on the cell of your
battery.

 

[AJL]

Weavertech89 <Weavertech89.47lim7@no.email.invalid> wrote:

>i use ubuntu 10.04 now and have 3 1/2 hours... and XP has
>drain it in under 2 hours.

That seems a pretty drastic difference. That is perhaps more a
religious view than a scientific one...

>Plus it also based on the cell of your battery.

In my power test the battery was *out* so that didn't matter. But even
if I could measure the power usage while powered from the battery
alone, the battery size wouldn't matter since a watt is still a
watt...

BTW my latest Ubuntu vs Vista test was to run Firefox 3.5 in both OSs
on a busy website (lots of movement). It raised the power used in both
by approximately 1 watt. No difference in efficiency between them
noticed in running this particular app.