How Much Power Does My Laptop Really Use?

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How Much Power Does My Laptop Really Use?

I've determined power usage on my desktop and on my server, but I hadn't gotten around to testing the power usage of my laptop. As battery life is always a concern with a laptop, I was particularly curious to see which parts of the laptop draw the most power. So I ran a few tests with my trusty kill-a-watt on my Dell Inspiron 300m. It's an ultaportable 2 pound laptop of late 2003 vintage with the following specs:

* Intel Pentium M 1.2GHz low voltage processor
* 640 megabytes of RAM
* 60 gigabyte hard drive
* 12.1" 1024x768 LCD screen
* Windows XP Pro

Let's start with some baselines:

Laptop off, battery charging 63w
Laptop off, battery disconnected 1w
Laptop off, sleeping 1w
Laptop on, idle at Windows desktop 15w

All subsequent tests were run with the laptop connected to AC power and the battery physically removed from the machine. Coding Horror: How Much Power Does My Laptop Really Use? Linked by LT Hacker