x220 notes

[matt]

On 10/10/12 19:44, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:26:58 -0700
> Любомир Григоров <nm.knife at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi, I am now running 10 HEAD with latest committed KMS patch.
> I must admit that I did not update this machine since some time.
>> I do not use currently suspend and resume on my X220. I use a script
>>>   for the brightness which makes it easy to handle for me.
>>>
>> I am still stuck with:
>> - add LEN0086 to acpi_ibm
>> - recompile
>> - kldload acpi_call
>> - acpi_call -p '\VBRC' -i n    // n is 0-16
>>
>> Can you share the script you have made, especially if you were able
>> to bind hotkeys to it?
>>
> The scripts are still available here
>
> http://www.alogreentechnologies.com/freebsd/XonX220
> http://www.alogreentechnologies.com/freebsd/setbrightness
>
> I never tried to bind the script to keys. I made some menu items in
> blackbox which works for me.
>>> There is a fundamental problem with powerd which stops a notebook to
>>> get better battery life time. powerd does not include the display
>>> brightness and it does not inlcude user activities in its process to
>>> regulate the CPU speed. In addition, the algorithm to find the best
>>> CPU speed gets easily irritated with short bursts of peak
>>> performance requirements.
>>>
>>> Erich
>>>
>> I do lose about 1-2 hours of battery time as opposed to Windows(I get
>> 7-8 hours there) due to those same bursts of performance, despite
>> running the adaptive profiles. My main concern is manual control of
>> brightness though.
>>
> You lose only 1-2h? I lose at least 2h.
>
> I have had several tries to make it better but got always held up by
> other things.
>
> My last attempts have still been with the Crusoe CPU. They gave the
> machine near XP battery times but needed manual interaction. So, I
> never published them.
>
> Erich
>
You've swapped the X220 cpu for something? Or a different machine?

I find X does horrible things to battery usage on my X220. Getting into 
the lowest C state, and disabling ALL of the USB devices helps somewhat, 
as does setting a lower backlight level at boot (you can make an rc 
script, or catch the backlight buttons while the bios is still loading).

Matt