[ltp] HPET timer on thinkpads?

[Timothy Murphy]

On Tue 23 Oct 2007, Jan Kundr=C3=A1t wrote:

> > Sorry, but how do you do this on a sleeping machine?
>
> A script was posted earlier in this thread. Basically you read remaining
> battery capacity before and after the suspend (which should take at
> least several hours and the laptop must not be connected to the AC
> adaptor). There's a module for that in hibernate-script, see thinkwiki.or=
g.

I saw that.
But I assumed (evidently wrongly) from posted readings
that there was some way of getting instant measurement.

> > As for an idle machine, what exactly do you mean by "idle"?
> > Doesn't the "grep" stop it being idle?
>
> Technically speaking, it does, but for purposes of this measurement, it
> is idle enough.

I'm still not really clear what is meant by "idle".
Is it just a vague term meaning "not much going on"?
I see with "ps aux | wc" that there are 156 processes listed on my machine,
almost all (but not quite all) sleeping.
Is that "idle"?