[ale] Tablet Keyboard

Sun Sep 2 17:27:52 EDT 2012

comments inline

Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

>Yeah, battery life I can justify. Dell/Acer is stupid low battery. Yes
>the tablets are far less total mass to lug around as well.
>
>For me, I want to know that the portable gizmo I have can do what I
>need to do. The Acer netbook is the smallest I can go and the keyboard
>is cramped for that. I did bump up the battery from 3 cell to 9 so it
>doubled in weight but went to 8+ hours of use. That works! The
>replacement 30GB hard drive from the 8GB flash drive gave me room for
>a full distro. So I bumped up the RAM to 1.5GB and crammed on a full
>Fedora install.

Now you have a HYPER netbook

>
>I would like to go the other way with my laptop by getting a
>multi-touch screen and ultra long-life power savings system. Something
>that ramps down wifi power when not in use as well as flash drive, led
>backlight or OLED screen and on-demand multi-core cpu so it will power
>down unused cores and, of course, 100% Linux compatible (preferably
>shipping bare).

I've found screen lighting to be the most energy hog for a laptop.  I've  found out that I can extend battery life a good bit by turning the screen down so low I can barely read it.  Normally, I like to keep my laptop near an outlet, and run at full (horse)power.

I don't normally let my hard drives spin down, for reliability reasons, but you can to save energy.  Obviously not relevant to SSD.

Then, look for all the sensors, like GPS and photocells which change the screen illumination.

On Windows, you can set the cooling mode to passive, which throttles CPU before spinning the fan.

As  I'm sure you know, anything that emits radio waves will gulp battery power.  In a response to a prior thread, someone recommended My Data Manager to keep track of Android data usage.  It's pretty cool, and itemizes data usage by app.  It would be cool if there were something like it for a laptop.

I just went through this exercise on Android.  I've tried it only to a minimal extent on a laptop.  If you want to absolutely reduce wifi or 3g / 4g usage to the minimum, do the following, among other things, which I haven't thought of.  You really want to turn this stuff back on when you're not in an ultra minimal battery use / wifi use / 3g 4g use mode.  I don't know how to automate this, but that would be nice.

Turn off automatic OS update checking.
Turn off automatic syncing for things like dropbox and evernote.
Turn off automatic addon updates for Firefox and (on windows) automatic updates for Firefox itself.
Do the same thing with other programs which automatically update.
Turn off syncing on things like podcast or RSS clients.
Turn off location based services which would trigger the GPS and / or wifi and / or 3g 4g.
Either don't start email or turn off auto sync.  On Android, gmail syncs whether or not you start it.
Turn off other "sync" things like your music library.
Turn off java and javascript and flash in your web browser.  I do this on my pc with noscript for firefox.  I have to do it manually in Android.
If you really want to go all out, turn off image downloading in the browser.
Turn off or don't use things like Youtube, Hulu, Netflix and things like your ebook software which is always syncing your library.
Turn off things which automatically download sports scores, or stock quotes.
Turn off automatic facebook and twitter updates.
Turn off things that automatically report your location or activities to others.
Turn off things like WeatherBug, which routinely update their databases.

That should get rid of MOST of the wifi 3g 4g usage.  Something like My Data Manager, on Android, will reveal other things that ping the net in the background, but many of them use minimal data, unless they're doing it all the time.  What I'd like on both android and the PC is to be able to forbid individual apps from accessing the radio transmitters when I'm really trying to conserve data or battery.  Let them try all they want, they wouldn't get through.  (They'd still use CPU cycles though.)

Also, for battery purposes, temporarily disable background processes like drive indexing, defragging, and full virus scans.  Leave the live virus scanner active though.

I think Linux always runs the CPU cores in on demand mode unless you change it.

It would be really interesting to try to wring every last drop of usage from a laptop, which might normally run for 3 hours.  It would be interesting to see if you could force it to go 6 hours.

Sincerely,

Ron

>
>If it can hit the sub $500 range, wow!
>
>On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
><atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>> Hi Jim,
>>
>> I can understand how that sounds funny. I still use my laptop for
>things
>> that need more horsepower or more screen real estate and enjoy it
>when I
>> need it. However, even with my add on case and keyboard, the tablet
>is SO SO
>> much more portable than the laptop. It's probably more portable than
>a
>> netbook, although I've never owned a netbook. This thing is so
>compact, I
>> can just grab it any time I'm running out the door just like I would
>a
>> medium sized book. As long as I can get access to a wifi signal, I
>know I
>> can do 85 - 90% of what I can with the PC. With the Verizon Jet Pack
>> [assuming I want to pay the data fee in a given month], I can even
>type this
>> reply riding in my car, as a passenger, way out in the boonies in
>Tennessee.
>> That's very cool. I've got the laptop, but it's in the trunk at the
>moment,
>> and it's battery doesn't last nearly as long.
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9
>Mail.
>> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>>
>> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to
>former
>> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the
>wrong
>> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want
>to
>> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate
>energy
>> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very
>quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
>> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>>
>>
>> Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I can't stop giggling. "I got a new tablet! Now it just needs a
>keyboard."
>>>
>>> If my laptop had twice the horsepower of a table, I'd be chomping at
>>> the bit to upgrade.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
>>> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Phil Turmel <philip at turmel.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >>On 08/31/2012 11:12 AM, Neal Rhodes wrote:
>>> >>> No, but every couple of months I go into a Micro Center type or
>HL
>>> >>> computers store to see if any of their bluetooth keyboards will
>>> >>> successfully pair with an Android phone.   Thus far we've found
>that
>>> >>> keyboards that work with Apple devices fail to pair with
>Android.
>>> >>> Android devices want a password specified, Apple do not, and
>thus far
>>> >>> I've left the store without anything that worked.
>>> >>
>>> >>I noted early in the bluetooth roll-out that many devices used
>"0000"
>>> >>as
>>> >>their password.  Since then, for any device that didn't explicitly
>>> >>document one, I've used that.  Hasn't failed me yet.
>>> >>
>>> >>HTH,
>>> >>
>>> >>Phil
>>> >
>>> > You can also try 1234 if 0000 doesn't work.
>>> >
>>> > Ron
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> > Ale mailing list
>>> > Ale at ale.org
>>> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> --
>>> James P. Kinney III
>>>
>>> Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What
>you
>>> gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on
>his
>>> own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
>>> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>>>
>>> http://electjimkinney.org
>>> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>--
>James P. Kinney III
>
>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
>gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
>own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
>- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>
>http://electjimkinney.org
>http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>_______________________________________________
>Ale mailing list
>Ale at ale.org
>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo

--

Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity.

(To whom it may concern.  My email address has changed.  Replying to former
messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
address.  Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com