Laptop power management

[banegrbic]

Hi ppl. This is my first post. I browsed this whole section and didnt find an answer.

So, I am using Fedora for the 1st time, but I am not a Linux newbie. I am also using Arch and Ubuntu.

I have a problem with my laptop. Its overheating and wasting to much energy. My battery is draining too fast. Lasts only 60 mins.... On Arch and Ubuntu almost 2 hours.

Laptop is Acer Aspire 5732ZG with Ati Mobility Radeon HD 4570. I am using open source drivers, so I know that this solution has bad power management. On the Arch Linux I solved it with KMS powersaving and with some modules for CPU throtling. I also used laptop-mode tools. This combo solved my problems.

So, my question is:
What about power management on Fedora 15?

Thx inadvance

[heringcheng]

I am having similar issue. I am running Fedora 15 (with all updates) o a Sony VAIO VPCZ1290X (Z Series) with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD. Most things work well (I haven't tried the camera), but:

• Battery is only charged to 50%. This may be a "battery saving" feature, but how do I change the limit?
• With a large capacity battery charged to 50%, with light web browsing via WiFi, I can only get no more than one hour of use. On the same laptop under Windows 7 Home Premium, it can run more than 4 hours.
• I cannot find documentation on the latest (version 1.98) PowerTOP utility to understand its display.

Can someone help me? Thanks.

---------- Post added at 09:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:49 PM ----------

I should have read all articles on http://www.lesswatts.org/. Even though they (and the screenshots) refer to a much older version of PowerTOP, they are useful nonetheless, and I should not have dismissed them out of hand in the first place.

In the "Tunables" tab, I simply pressed <ENTER> on each entry that was "Bad" and changed it to "Good". After a short while, my power consumption (as measured crudely by how loudly my laptop fan sounds) dropped. Mos noticeably, wakeups/second (in the Overview tab) dropped from > 3,000 to around 700, and now my CPUs spend more of the time in high-numbered C-states.