"2: Powertop,br> This little gem of an application can help
you learn how to make your laptops (and desktops) more efficient.
When you run Powertop, it will examine your system and give you
tips on how to better your energy performance. When I run Powertop
on my laptop, I get: "Suggestion: Disable hal' from polling your
cdrom with: hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0 'hal' is the
component that auto-opens a window if you plug in a CD but disables
SATA power saving from kicking in." Some of the suggestions will
even tell you how much wattage you can save by killing (or
configuring) services. Even though the man page for Powertop states
it is for Intel-based machines, it will work on AMD machines as
well.
"3: Netbooks
No matter how much you deny this, netbooks are not only here to
stay but are growing faster than many predicted. Many of these
netbooks are optimized for long battery life through minimal power
usage. Intel has finally put a hand of cards into this game with
its Moblin OS. Moblin's primary goal is low-power and high battery
life. Moblin is a Linux-based operating system and is only for
netbooks. Another netbook feature that makes them especially green
is their no-moving-parts-storage -- which means they should exceed
the lifespan of the standard notebook. So netbooks are one of the
greener options available. And no matter how well Windows 7 is
received, it can't beat the cost of Linux on a netbook."
