Linux Mint Forums

This afternoon I installed Mint 14 Mate 64bit. I've noticed that my battery life has gone down from 5hrs to 4. I am using the standard drivers. If it helps here are the specs of my laptop:
AMD Phenom II X2 N660 3.0 Ghz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
3gb DDR3
9 cell battery



P.S Sorry If I posted in the wrong spot. I looked at the categories and still wasn't sure which this issue would fit under.

It could be that Mint 14 uses a newer Linux kernel that has regressions in the battery life department. You could also have new packages that use more resources than the old ones. If you were running proprietary drivers before, and now you're running the OSS drivers, that could cause a battery life reduction. Your default screen brightness could be brighter. Maybe the battery monitor hasn't learned the capabilities of your battery yet, and it is just making a poor estimate. I've run my laptop for an hour with "15 minutes" of life left.
Seriously though, there are hundreds, nay, thousands of things that it could be. These are just some of the things I've seen impact my battery life. Who knows? You could have a cell that's going bad in your battery pack. I wish you luck finding the problem. I'm sure someone will be interested in the solution. Just remember, 4 hours is nothing to sneeze at.

I've noticed oddly with 14 Cinn,, 64bit the same ordeal. I hve a Elitebook 8560w, in windows under light use i'd get about 6-7 hours battery life, if idel 10-12 hrs, and at high usage i'd get 3-4 hrs battery life. I switched over to Linux Mint, and now at 100% full battery, i might get an hour (granted this is an 8 core, 16 gigs of ram laptop). I also have an elitebook 8540, not nearly has powerful a batter, quad core, 8 gigs of ram, 3-4 hours heavy use with Windows, 45 -60 minutes max on mint.

I havent tried any other distros yet though. I might switch if I find ubuntu gets any better. I used to get MORE battery life with Ubuntu than windows. So this is odd to me.

hi
I had same problem with life of battery on mint 14.
And also a fan problem(turned on all the time). Bouth problems solved with one thing. I have lenovo with two graphic cards, intel hd and nvidia. I turned off one graphic card in bios and since then no fan is turned on all the time and my battery life span is again 5 to 6 h like in windows. ah yes. i have only two options in bios.first one is bouth cards and secon one is only intel. so in linux i use only intel and when i boot in win if i need nvidia i have to turn it on in bios before booting.but for me that is no problem. if i upgrade bios the maybe i would have three options 1. intel 2. bouth and 3. nvidia. but for now it is good like this.
ciao