power saving -- software side

[Seal]

anyone who has tracked laptop hardware concerns lately know that the current trend is to increase perfomance per watt, usually by neater hardware.
well, Intel found out that tweaking software (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/05/16/1742204) can help a lot to lower power requirements, especially with the new tickless feature (http://kerneltrap.org/node/6750) of the Linux kernel.

it will be rather amusing to see Linux-equipped laptops run for several hours longer than the comparable Mac or windows box.

[SilverCrusader]

Lol, well yes, by lowering the amount of software running at one time, the less energy your entire system is using. Software relates back to the hardware, which uses the electricity. However, the best way to save energy would to use an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen, thats where most the energy goes, is these LCD screens.
Check out the iRiver (http://http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/5be2139cb0672110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/58.html).

[Neo]

zomg but this means those aol trials and intray quicktime/itunes/real player crap is dead.

whats the practical numbers? ie: what are the battery lengths we should seeing?
-Neo

[Seal]

given that the software used to wake up the hardware regularly for no real reason, and intel's efforts here aim to eliminate that, a mostly idle laptop can get several watts off its power drain. this could potentially add an hour or more for a system rated for 3-4 hours.

hardware itself is important here; but computers are systems comprised of software and hardware. if either works against the other's fundamentals, it's not going to work optimally.

hence all those tray and other background tasks are bad when you are on the road. this aims to make those background tasks more power-efficient.

[Neo]

Awesome. I've been looking at notebooks for awhile, but not sure if I want a windows based one (Specifically for this reason) since I'd prefer a long battery life.

-Neo