[mcpics]

Just curious if anyone knows how much do you save on battery power by turning off wifi, on the Mini 9. I get about 3 hours with it on, is their much of a savings with it off. Also using the keyboard key, how do you turn it off and on? Thanks

[somms]

Originally Posted by mcpics

Just curious if anyone knows how much do you save on battery power by turning off wifi, on the Mini 9. I get about 3 hours with it on, is their much of a savings with it off. Also using the keyboard key, how do you turn it off and on? Thanks

Negligible...you would be better off removing the WLAN Mini-PCIe completely if you are interested in maximizing power savings

[holmes4]

I'll disagree - turning off WiFi will save power. If you have the proper application installed, Fn-2 will bring up the wireless switch.

[somms]

Originally Posted by holmes4

I'll disagree - turning off WiFi will save power. If you have the proper application installed, Fn-2 will bring up the wireless switch.

True, but removing the WLAN card completely when not in use would save much more battery life than just disabling in software which doesn't remove the components that are energized are 'still' working and being powered!

[holmes4]

Actually, the card does know how to power down when the OS tells it to. It draws much less power in the disabled state - not zero, but much less.

[mick]

It's time-consuming to test different cases. Yesterday I connected a Tekkeon 3450 external battery to my Mini 9 running Ubuntu 9.04 and played an h.264 movie in endless loop in mplayer, kept google news (with refreshes) in one Firefox window, four terminal windows open with one endless loop perl script, and left both wifi and bluetooth on. After 7 hours and 35 minutes, I stopped the test with the gauge showing 8 minutes of battery time remaining. It's probably the only battery test I'll do for some time.

[faber78]

what he say?....

i took mine out, as i dont use it and read somewhere it was a high source of heat.

not that that awnsers your question....

[somms]

Originally Posted by faber78

what he say?....

i took mine out, as i dont use it and read somewhere it was a high source of heat.

True. Heat=wasted power. That is why you get max power savings from removing the WLAN when not in use than by just in software since it will still produce heat and wast power!

[TobyRhino]

I'm not really sure disconnecting/removing the WLAN card is very practical. :P

[Dreizehn]

I think windows 7 constantly looks for new wireless networks to connect to, and doing so would take more power. So I believe wlan does take more power. I know that an iPod touch uses a lot more power when the Wlan is on, but not sure how close that is to the Mini9