[SOLVED] Laptop battery dies when watching video

Question

So I have come a long way, but still struggle with powersaving settings.  When I watch video, specificaly youtube, or work with a virtual machine, my laptop gets hot and the battery gets drained within a few minutes.  I have followed instructions on the wiki for CPU scaling, laptop-mode-tools, etc but cannot figure out what to do to keep the laptop running cool and efficient when under load.  When I am not doing anything outside of websurfing, my laptop runs cool, and the battery seems ok.  Anyone out there have pointers on what I could check, or how to keep the power settings in check when watching videos or working in VMs? Here is my lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 12)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 12)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 01)
04:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
Thanks!
Last edited by gabber (2012-08-21 21:16:13)

Answer 1

Well it sounds like you have a very serious hardware issue if you are being literal. XD As for Flash, the reason it is not available on Apple's products is because it is a monster battery eater. Running VMs is the same, you now have two whole OS running as well as an emulation layer. As for how to best use a battery for long life, I'll just point you to the battery university: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/
Hope you learn something useful.