[vox-tech] Power consumption (was: a few pre-install questions)

[mrp]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 11:17:30AM -0400, David Hummel wrote:
> In practice, even the current generation of G4 laptops get only ~2.5
> hours max.  Where are you getting those numbers, and for what models?

This could quickly devolve into a religeous argument.  I've always been
told that the cleaner RISC architectures make it easy to power down
large parts of the chip when idle, and that the more complicated CISC
architecture makes power optimization difficult.  However, most modern
CISC chips are built on a RISC core with a layer of CISC stuck on top, so
maybe that's no longer as true.  But it's been my experience that powerPC
based laptops have longer useful life than Intel based laptops.  e.g.:

I have a friend with a 15" G4 Powerbook (1 Ghz I believe), and if
he's doing simple email/word processing, then he gets well over 3
hours. Under heavy loading it's probably less, but under heavy load my
T20 only got 1.5 hours when new (not long enough to play an average DVD,
for instance)... now it's lucky to get 20-30 minutes.

  -- Mitch