Re: [NTLK] [OT now] The OQO xp power mgt

From: John Goggan (jgoggan_at_dcg.com)
Date: Thu Jun 06 2002 - 12:55:55 EDT


Ticknor wrote:
> Dunno, i could say the same for my ThinkPad. Under 98SE i had all
> sorts of weird standby/hibernation issues on battery power. Often
> hard reboots were necessary, which totally destroys the concept of
> convenient portable computing. When i got my copy of XP, i expected
> better power management. it was not to be. The thinkpad seems to do
> whatever it likes when it comes to battery operation.

Exactly -- the ThinkPad does whatever it likes.

Again, maybe this is an exception and you are right about it being Microsoft's
fault, but in most of the cases where I have seen problems with hibernation --
it was related to the hardware (bad design, incorrect BIOS settings that don't
allow the OS to do what it wants, etc.) -- not the OS.

> If the battery gets low, windows generates a message right? I have it
> set to show a message when this happens with the audible warning
> disabled. What happens when this occurs? An annoying beep-beep-beep
> with no visual warning in sight...*sigh*

Um, the annoying "beep beep beep"s usually come from the hardware directly and
are not a Windows thing. My father's laptop did this forever until I
reconfigured it (which took an updated BIOS just to disable that annoying
beep). It certainly wasn't Window's fault that it was beeping like a
banshee. It was the laptop manufacturer's built-in "beep on low battery"
design. It would have done it in the same annoying way if that machine was
running Linux, BeOS, or anything else.

> Maybe if the battery metre worked properly i could keep an eye on
> the battery state. but nope from time to time the metre gets stuck
> at 1/3 just like the fuel guage in my dad's old ford Granada.

Sounds like my Newton battery meter. :) 100%... 20%... thinks it is charged
in 2 minutes... 100%... 20%... heh. :)

> What i liked was the MacOS sleep function. It sleeps when you close
> the lid, it stays asleep [my thinkpad woke up in calculus class and,
> since i had left winamp running, started blaring a MC Paul Barman
> mp3...it woke to go into hibernation mode..*head shake*..],

My laptop seems to hibernate just fine. Again, I just think we are blaming
hardware for software issues in many cases. Apple/MacOS has the advantage of
building most of the hardware too, of course. There are a ton more issues
when someone else is making the hardware. Granted, maybe that is a downside
to Windows -- but the point is that a lot of hardware problems look like OS
problems when they aren't.

 - John...

-- 
Read the List FAQ/Etiquette: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Read the Newton FAQ: http://www.guns-media.com/mirrors/newton/faq/
This is the NewtonTalk mailing list - http://www.newtontalk.net



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Jul 03 2002 - 14:01:50 EDT