Mark Hellman wrote:

> Relevant hardware:
>    - Pentium M 1.6 Ghz
>    - ATI Mobility Radeon 9200

Anton already commented on the GFX-card possibilities

> Battery Life on SuSE: 3h50
> Battery Life on Windows: 5h30
> 
> I was so surprised by this difference that I decided to repeat the test on
> SuSE, this time switching the wireless card completely (unloaded the
> module) and increasing the HD_MAX_AGE to 1800. The improvement in battery
> life was just 10 minutes...

Yes, in fact the Harddisk does not really consume much power if it is
not actively seeking etc (judging from the data sheets)

> Frequency scaling seems to be working fine since the CPU Mhz is always 600.
> And the hard disk actually spins down.
> 
> So does anyone have an explanation for this huge battery life difference?

try
cat /proc/acpi/processor/*/power
to find out the maximum supported C-State. If it is only C2, this may be
a problem with your DSDT which is worked around in Windows by specially
crafted drivers.
-- 
Stefan Seyfried                  \ "I didn't want to write for pay. I
QA / R&D Team Mobile Devices      \ wanted to be paid for what I write."
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nürnberg \                    -- Leonard Cohen
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