CF-29 + Ubuntu 13.04 = fully charged battery to dead in 5 hours in "suspend" mode.

What gives?

With XP, I could leave the laptop on in standby for at least 2 days before it was at 30% charge from a full charge.

Is Ubuntu an electrical power hog?

Is there something I need to set up correctly?

Please help.

TIA.

 

Sorry I have never installed it on my my CF-29, but I have no such problem with 13.04 on MY CF-30 Mk1. So, my guess is that it is not going into suspend mode correctly.

 

I was able to figure out a couple things;

1. Ubuntu isn't as power friendly as windows due to tweaks,
2. I found that the "hibernate" option was disabled, and best I can figure based on what I have read is that hibernate apparently doesn't work well with many computers,

I figured out that, and you are correct, that suspend did not seem to supsend properly, and, I was able to reactivate the Hibernate mode, I just not have tested it to see if it actually works to save battery power. Will do so later and post back

 

Linux still has a lot of catching up to do, power-saving wise. Unfortunately, device manufacturers (mostly) provide drivers for Windows, with good power-saving features.
On Linux, most of the drivers are open-source, usually written through reverse-engineering, because manufacturers don't provide public datasheets, or if they do, they do it only by NDA.
So, with (very) little information, it's not easy to write a device driver, able to compete with those in Windows.

There are ways to tweak Linux for better power-saving. You can start with the "powertop" utility. I think it's already in the Ubuntu software repositories.

If you don't have issues with hibernate, I think that's your best bet, as hibernate (a.k.a. Suspend-to-Disk) won't consume any more power than having the PC off, because after the memory state is saved to disk, the computer shuts off.