Comments on: OLPC battery life--an update

Glaskowsky passes along some feedback from the OLPC organization.

[idsantos]

Here's a question for Mr. Bill Gates!..

When will it be posible to do that with Windows Vista installed?..

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Windows also has power-management features

Windows already provides similar power-management features. Windows
laptops need much larger batteries to get similar battery-life figures because
they run faster, higher-power processors, more memory, rotating hard disks,
etc.

In short, they're more complex and more capable, and that requires them to
consume more power.

I will note that the power consumption of most laptops is less than
proportional to their relative performance vs. the XO. You can get a notebook
with a dual-core 1.6 GHz CPU and a 12" LCD that consumes only about 8W
under normal use-- about 2.5 times as much average power consumption as
the XO, but with over 10 times the CPU performance potential.

Of course, that system will consume much, much more power if you actually
try to use all that extra performance. The XO maxes out at about 6 watts for
433 MHz of CPU frequency (roughly the performance equivalent of a 300 MHz
Core 2 Duo processor), according to Mr. Gettys of OLPC.

A 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo low-voltage notebook can consume 25 watts or more
(I'm just guessing here, I've never tried to measure it), but you're still getting
ten times the performance. So in fact a PC notebook is more energy efficient.
This should come as no surprise, because it uses more modern technology
than the XO.

The XO's advantage as an educational system is that it delivers enough
performance and a lower minimum-power figure at the lowest possible cost.
That's more important than energy efficiency for these emerging markets.

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[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Oh, one more thing

When I was working at Microprocessor Report, Bill Gates once told me that he
read our newsletter, and I thought that was pretty cool. But if he's reading this
blog, I would be very much surprised. Flattered, of course, but surprised. :-)

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