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4K displays eat batteries (at least driving them). I'm very nomadic in my usage and I want a computer that I can do 8 hours of work on a single charge if I hav

4K displays eat batteries (at least driving them). I'm very nomadic in my usage and I want a computer that I can do 8 hours of work on a single charge if I have to. Pretty much impossible with a 4K display, so I've gotten used to lower resolutions. Since I have vision issues (eye strain triggers ocular migraines), I usually have a massive font -- imagine full screening a console with only 32 lines of text. In that configuration, 4K is definitely overkill because there is very little difference to see. If you are young, with super power vision (like some people I know), I think it would make a pretty big difference in really tiny fonts and might be worth the power price. However, I think if I were going that route, I would be getting a 15" not a 13" -- I can't really see the advantage of the smaller format if you are tying yourself to a power cord anyway.

tommica 8y ago
I'm curious, what machine are you using to achieve those? And do you have some special applications to help you in doing what you do?
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Currently have a Toshiba KIRA V63, which unfortunately I think was only available in Japan. Basically i5 processor with 8 gigs of memory, SSD, integrated Intel graphics. The main power saving tool is Powertop. However, I run Arch and do not install GNOME, or KDE. I've got Xmonad for a window manager and I'm usually using Kitty as a terminal emulator. Work requires me to run Chromium (I write internal web systems for a travel tour company, and we deploy to Chrome, so I only need to make sure it works on that platform). I'm mostly spending my time in tmux with Emacs (in Evil mode). I'm pretty careful about turning everything off -- for example bluetooth, etc. For maximum power savings I use a very high contrast colour scheme and turn the backlight down using xblacklight. Indoors, in the library for instance, I can happily turn it down to 7-11%. Outdoors, I usually need 70%. If I'm on the train or bus (I often work on the go), then I'm usually about 20%. The backlight is really the biggest thing to consider. It helps to spend some time in Powertop and see what's draining the battery. Another important thing is that I run as little disk access as possible. Even with only 8 gigs of memory, I have no swap partition or swap file. I try to stay out of the browser and do as much as possible with TDD -- files will be cached by the OS. As much as possible I have no VMs running (obviously with the lack of memory) and as we've pretty much moved over to Docker this has helped out. Apart from that I'm pretty anal about my machine. I don't allow anything to run that I'm not completely aware of. I've got a processor monitor running and if I notice it spike when I'm not doing anything, I track down what's going on. Same thing with memory. Ah.. One more thing. I almost always have the WIFI turned off, unless I'm actually communicating with someone. I tend to work using pomodoros and spend 5 minutes every half an hour checking my email, etc. But I try to keep offline documentation, etc available. I'm going to be replacing this machine soon (I think it's 3-4 years old now). I'll probably end up buying the V63's replacement (I forget the model number). It's supposed to have about 10% more battery, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I can relax some of my habits. If I'm not grinding the machine too much I can usually get 9-10 hours. However some days I only manage 6, which is a pain.

tommica 8y ago

I'm curious, what machine are you using to achieve those? And do you have some special applications to help you in doing what you do?

mikekchar 8y ago
Currently have a Toshiba KIRA V63, which unfortunately I think was only available in Japan. Basically i5 processor with 8 gigs of memory, SSD, integrated Intel graphics. The main power saving tool is Powertop. However, I run Arch and do not install GNOME, or KDE. I've got Xmonad for a window manager and I'm usually using Kitty as a terminal emulator. Work requires me to run Chromium (I write internal web systems for a travel tour company, and we deploy to Chrome, so I only need to make sure it works on that platform). I'm mostly spending my time in tmux with Emacs (in Evil mode). I'm pretty careful about turning everything off -- for example bluetooth, etc. For maximum power savings I use a very high contrast colour scheme and turn the backlight down using xblacklight. Indoors, in the library for instance, I can happily turn it down to 7-11%. Outdoors, I usually need 70%. If I'm on the train or bus (I often work on the go), then I'm usually about 20%. The backlight is really the biggest thing to consider. It helps to spend some time in Powertop and see what's draining the battery. Another important thing is that I run as little disk access as possible. Even with only 8 gigs of memory, I have no swap partition or swap file. I try to stay out of the browser and do as much as possible with TDD -- files will be cached by the OS. As much as possible I have no VMs running (obviously with the lack of memory) and as we've pretty much moved over to Docker this has helped out. Apart from that I'm pretty anal about my machine. I don't allow anything to run that I'm not completely aware of. I've got a processor monitor running and if I notice it spike when I'm not doing anything, I track down what's going on. Same thing with memory. Ah.. One more thing. I almost always have the WIFI turned off, unless I'm actually communicating with someone. I tend to work using pomodoros and spend 5 minutes every half an hour checking my email, etc. But I try to keep offline documentation, etc available. I'm going to be replacing this machine soon (I think it's 3-4 years old now). I'll probably end up buying the V63's replacement (I forget the model number). It's supposed to have about 10% more battery, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I can relax some of my habits. If I'm not grinding the machine too much I can usually get 9-10 hours. However some days I only manage 6, which is a pain.