If you don't need infrared support,
disable it in the BIOS or shutdown the
IrDA device driver. There are also some
IrDA features of the kernel which are
useful for saving power.
In the specifications of my HP
OmniBook 800 it is recommended to turn
off the IR port, if it is not in use,
because it may consume up to 10
percent of the battery time.
If necessary, you may also try to
disable the Fast RRs feature in the IrDA
section of the kernel. This option
will give you much better latencies
but will consume more power.
PCMCIA services consume much power, so shut them down if you don't need them.
I'm not sure to which extend the
backlight
consumes power. WARNING: AFAIK
this device can only bear a
limited number of uptime circles.
So avoid using screensavers too
much.
For some examples to build
batteries with increased uptime
up to 8 hours look at
Adorable Toshiba Libretto.
For information about APM look at the APM chapter above.
A hacked rclock.
Booker C. Bense has hacked the
rclock program to include a simple battery power
meter on the clock face.
KDE provides
KAPM, Kbatmon and
Kcmlaptop. Written by Paul Campbell
kcmlaptop is a set of KDE control panels that
implements laptop computer support functions, it includes a dockable
battery status monitor for laptops - in short a little icon in the
KDE status bar that shows how much battery time you have left. It
also will warn you when power is getting low and allows you to
configure power saving options.
Similar packages you may find at the
GNOME project . See the
software maps at both sites.
Please see
Battery-Powered-mini-HOWTO
for more information.
toshiba-fan Turn the fan on a Toshiba Pentium laptop on
or off. This is a command line utility to turn the fan of a Toshiba laptop
on or off, or view its current state. It should work on all Toshiba Pentium
laptops that have fans.