I've been using Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 6400 for quite some time. While I much prefer it to Windows, I can't help but notice the battery consumption is much higher under the penguin than under... uh... the window.

I've decided that WHILE I mess around with Arch (maybe), I'll reinstall Ubuntu on this guy from the ground up like I did on my desktop. Maybe Ubuntu's default install uses more daemons than I really need, causing more power consumption.

I'll do some reading on it for now. Hopefully I come up with something good and/or useful.

Edit: "Laptop Mode is NOT allowed to run: /var/run/laptop-mode-enabled does not exist."
When I saw this, my head cocked slightly, and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. Had laptop mode not been at work this entire time? Have I been degrading my battery life this entire time without realizing? My god... what have I done?

I'm DEFINITELY re-installing on this little guy over the weekend via cli and then building on top of it, just like I did with my desktop. After that I'll follow this guide: http://klamstwo.org/evad/archives/34 and I'll be sure to check laptop_mode status, as well. Now I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be easy to find non-gnome related power management tools for a *box environment.