He probably means "What frequency (i.e. clock speed) is your CPU running at?" If your laptop isn't doing proper dynamic scaling of its CPU (i.e. underclocking at low system loads, as is completely standard), then it would run at full speed all the time and give the symptoms you describe: heat and poor battery life.

Ben Berry

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Syed Fahd < syd.fahd@gmail.[redacted] > wrote:

@Rahul, Justin

Thanks for your inputs. Will follow up on your suggestions tonight.

@Sethu

could you clarify what you meant by 'frequency of operation in Ubuntu'?

Thanks,

Fahd

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:22 AM, justin parker < xjparkerx@gmail.[redacted] > wrote:

You might want to check if Ubuntu is configuring the laptop-mode kernel modules.  There is a pretty good explanation of laptop-mode on the arch linux wiki @ https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools

Does Ubuntu disable laptop mode in 10.10?  I know they were in a few previous releases.

Justin

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Syed Fahd < syd.fahd@gmail.[redacted] > wrote:

Hey LUG,

According to the Hardware Sensors Applet in gnome panel, the AMD Athlon TF-20 64 bit processor in my 1 year old Acer 5532 spends most of the time baking at temperatures ranging from 65C-75C while running Ubuntu 10.10.  As you can imagine, that makes for a very uncomfortable lap.

In contrast, Windows 7 doesn't feel like it gets any hotter than mid 50C. I couldn't get any measurements with CoreTemp or SpeedFan (neither work on my computer) and there wasn't any option in the Bios for temperature readings so no empirical evidence apart from the lack of burn marks on my legs. With less heating issues, Win 7 is much quieter and has better endurance.

What are your suggestions? (I'm considering switching to a lighter distro or an older version of Ubuntu.)

Cheers,

Fahd