Popularity of Laptops increases from day to day. Today not only businessmen who need possibility to work in any time and any place buy laptops but also ordinary users. Laptops are bought as the home PC and for work in office.
Not big mobile computer will be the good partner during traveling. It helps to post the latest photo from the sea in blog, and to communicate with colleagues.
This article is for that people who time from time use one of the best laptop's features: mobility, or accurately ability to work without net during some time. Many people know that less difficult operation on the mobile computer and less loaded its components then more time will functional its accumulator. But not everybody knows these operations that are more power-hundry for a laptop. In this article we will try to answer for this question.
Testing
We will describe this question with the help of 17 different test sceneries that tested laptops in different work conditions. The first test is our standard. Mobile Computer is turned on. There are not any operations. All wireless interfaces were turned off. Max energy save mode was turned on (for min processor and video card frequencies for hard disk were turned off in 5 min of inactivity). Brightness of monitor was set to min (but the display was not turned off!). Just in this mode laptop is able to functional more time. Therefore in all diagrams we will compare all tests with this one.
The second test distinguishes from the first one with only one characteristic ??“ the display brightness was set to max. So this test will perform the possibility to understand should we spare on the display brightness. In the other tests it set to min.
Next group of tests (3 tests) verify the energy consumption during the max processor load, RAM and video card. For the processor boot CPU Burn-in utility was used. Both cores were loaded. RAM was loaded with the use of benchmark that is built in PCMark 2005. And Video Card was loaded with the use of graphic tests (only graphic) 3DMark 2006.
In which operations are these three components deal? All operate in games. But video card is loaded more (notably if high definition and high graphic quality are set), then processor and RAM. If you decide to archive data, processor and RAM will be loaded.
The operation with disk storage units is run rarely on laptops. For this purpose we test the time of unmanaged mode with max loaded hard disk (copy different files with one part of Winchester to another) and optical drive mechanism (there were 4 tests: read/save CD, read/save DVD). Notify that while watching a film works the hardware on what it is saved, RAM a little and the processor decodes audio and video flow. Modern video card are able to decode DVD and the most modern - HD Video as well.
The information comes on laptops from outer world through net interfaces or USB. We have 4 test sceneries for this. The first and the second sceneries test how much energy Wi-Fi uses. There is the opinion that wireless net cards minimize the accumulator charge very quickly. So we see how long laptop works when Wi-Fi is turned on and max loaded. Two other tests deal with Ethernet and USB. We copied large files through these interfaces and verify the time of it work. The results were very interesting.
And the last thing ??“ is sound. We have three tests on this issue. The first was done when sound was completely turned off (Mute mode was selected in the laptop settings). Why did we do it? We did it to verify the load level of the processor and RAM while music reproduction through Winamp 5.5 player. The second test was done when laptop acoustic system was turned on. The sound level was set to max. The third test is differed from the second by the max sound level was reproduced through headphones.
We suppose that our method covers the majority of the fields where laptops are used. Now, let's view the configuration.
Laptops configurations
We've tested modern but not least laptops. But they are actually today. They do not vanish from the market and the latest modern computers do not greatly better in technical characteristics. Formally, all results will be able to move to the latest models of mobile computers.
Five systems participated in testing. There are their characteristics:
There is the laptop with Celeron M processor in testing. Notice that this chip hasn't a part of energy saving technologies in contrast to Pentium M, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. So it will be interesting to view as it'll affect the unmanaged mode of the mobile computer.
