Battery Life on a Lenovo ideapad u410 ultrabook

Question

I have bought a Lenovo Ideapad u410 last week. Normally I only use Ubuntu, so I tried to install it. After a few (or a few more ;) ) hours I got it working. I used both systems, Ubuntu and Windows, without problems. Now my Windows system dosen't boot anymore, but that is another story...

Today I noticed that the battery life is only about 3 hours (the u410 should have a battery life of about 9 hours!). Also the ultrabook gets very, very hot.

Does anyone know how I can increase the battery life and handle this "gets too hot" thing? I'm really concerned about my new baby =)

Solution 1

sudo apt-get install powertop
sudo powertop 

Other people report it too, not much help in certain faq-like forums. http://communities.intel.com/thread/30526

I'd check first of all if it's related to the power regression issue 3.4-3.5, it seems to affect other Lenovos too (related to some very old chips in those new systems). Try running powertop after killing X to see if it is graphics related. It could also be connected to RC6-states not being activated like they should. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1MTI

Don't use conservative CPU scheduler, on-demand is recommended as the appropriate by Intel and all other authoritative sources. The names are a bit misleading, just run on-demand on such a laptop.

This laptop has both the discrete Intel GPU and an Nvidia GPU, try deactivating one of them and check for power consumption.

I advise you to create a proper bug report for this issue instead of using askubuntu.com - most advice in here is not so qualified. Such a large power consumption as in the U410 on Ubuntu current is not an issue of tweaking power settings - it signifies some actual defect somewhere. Relatedly, do you also experience issues with the built-in microphone?

Good luck!

Solution 2

Try:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/PowerSavingTweaks

and also:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/IdentifyingIssues

Comments

[atenz]

Try referring this.

[Mitch]

Take a look at this for battery optimization: askubuntu.com/questions/147094/…