[ltp] t43p -- battery life

[Dmitri]

My t43p has a very lousy battery life under linux. With a 6 cell, I
get about 2hrs, while Windows gives me about 3hrs.

With the screen set to lowest brightness, bluetooth off, cpu scaled to
700Mhz and without load, the power consumption under linux is about
21-23W (as reported by ibm_acpi), while windows with the same settings
eats about 15-16W (as reported by Centrino Hardware Control).

My suspicion is that the ATI V3200 doesn't scale down its features
under linux as well as under windows. I do have DynamicClock enabled,
but it seems to have a smaller effect than the PowerPlay mode under
windows.

Also, if I turn wifi off, the numbers for linux go down to 18-19W,
while windows is about the same with wifi on and off, which suggests
that windows is also better at managing the powersaving features of
the wlan card.

Has anybody been able to get better battery life on a t43p under linux?

Thanks!

   -Dmitri