{"id":2446,"date":"2010-04-23T22:56:44","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T05:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=2446"},"modified":"2010-04-23T23:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T06:01:00","slug":"monster-netbook-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/monster-netbook-battery\/","title":{"rendered":"Monster Netbook Battery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I stubbornly refuse to give up my classic Asus Eee PC 701, one of the original netbooks. It&#8217;s 2.5 years old now but still serving me well. While these are supposed to be fairly disposable machines, I&#8217;m actually using this thing more and more these days (longer commute may have something to do with it). I decided to upgrade the battery from the included one (4400 mAh, rated for 2-2.5 hours). 7200 mAh batteries abounded for this Eee PC model but I decided to go crazy and buy the 10400 mAh battery. <\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s <em>huge<\/em>. No one can keep a straight face when gazing upon this beast.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/monster-netbook-battery.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Monster battery for Eee PC\" width=\"300\" height=\"286\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2450\" \/><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>Naturally, I&#8217;m curious whether this battery is actually that much better. I searched to find if there are any established methodologies for testing battery life. It seems that the most established method is the most intuitive method, scientifically: Find a way to simulate typical usage and measure how long it takes before the machine dies from lack of battery charge. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Methodology<\/strong> <!--more--><br \/>\nTo that end, here is my testing method:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Charge a battery all the way (until the Easy Peasy\/Ubuntu battery meter no longer appears)<br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/power-icon.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Power icon\" width=\"74\" height=\"68\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2447\" \/><br \/>\n<\/center>\n<\/li>\n<li>Prevent the machine from sleeping or even blanking its screen; for this, I found the program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.semicomplete.com\/projects\/xdotool\/\">xdotool<\/a> which programmatically actuates various X windows actions, like mouse movement<\/li>\n<li>On a different machine, run netcat in listening mode<\/li>\n<li>Create a script that wakes up periodically and connects via netcat to the other machine and prints a timestamp<\/li>\n<li>Unplug power cable and note the starting timestamp<\/li>\n<li>Go to bed<\/li>\n<li>The next morning, observe the final timestamp transmitted to the other computer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This may seem like a fairly non-stressful test. However, I think it simulates my normal working conditions in which I mostly use the netbook as a glorified portable word processor, typing things like this very blog post whilst riding a train.<\/p>\n<p>This is the Bash script I came up with for testing:<\/p>\n<pre>\r\nwhile [ 1 ]\r\ndo\r\n  date\r\n  x=$RANDOM\r\n  let \"x%=800\"\r\n  y=$RANDOM\r\n  let \"y%=480\"\r\n  xdotool mousemove $x $y\r\n  sleep 30\r\ndone | nc &lt;dest-machine&gt; &lt;port-number&gt;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>Sit in a loop, print the current timestamp, move the mouse pointer to a random coordinate (800&#215;480 screen), and sleep for 30 seconds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Raw Data<\/strong><\/p>\n<pre>\r\n4400 mAh battery:\r\n1st run: 2h29m\r\n2nd run: 2h31m\r\n\r\n10400 mAh battery:\r\n1st run: 5h22m\r\n2nd run: 5h23m\r\n<\/pre>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><br \/>\nSo, yay, I&#8217;m glad to learn that the enormous new battery lasts proportionally longer than the original battery. This is especially useful since the battery indicator isn&#8217;t that helpful in estimating the charge of the larger battery. I suspect that either the software or the hardware simply isn&#8217;t aware that a longer battery life is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much better is my new, gigantic battery?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-projects"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2455,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}