Performance Issues on Battery Power?

Does anybody have performance issues when running their AAO on the battery? I know the Atom has speed step enabled, and I thought that was the cause, but I disabled speed step (I think) using powercfg.exe and I still get the same issue.

The symptoms are always the same, slow loading of web pages, especially those with a lot of graphics or scripts. Also, Thunderbird slows down to a crawl.

I can usually clear it up by plugging in to AC power, or by cycling the AA1CTL icon from "800MHz" to "Dynamic". This doesn't happen all of the time, only occasionally (but it's really annoying when it does happen).

So, my question is, does anyone else see this? Does anyone know if the other components of the system (graphics chipset, Ram?) have power saving modes as well? Any help would be appreciated.

-Thanks

 

If you have configured a1ctl to run at 800 Mhz when on battery, then a1ctl will control the processor speed and keep it at the lowest speed (800 Mhz), and thats why you experience the slowdown when operating on battery.

I have set a1ctl to keep the processor in the dynamic state, while on battery, and do not experience any detrimental effect on the batterylife - 3 cell battery with WiFi enabled, BT, NIC and Webcam disabled, gives me around 2 hours and 45 minutes runtime on XP. When running Ubuntu from an USB flashdrive, and using the Ondemand cpu governor, I get 2 hours and 30 minutes, the lower runtime is caused by the extra powerdrain from running off an USB port.

 

What is the "default state" if not controlled by a1ctl or other 3rd party utility? Mine seems to alternate between 800 and 1.66. Is this factory set default? It is noticeable when browsing because the fan kicks in when a page loads and then stops when reading. Is this normal? (On a d150)

Also I am noticing the screen drops a few notches in brigtness when I go to battery. I thought it was because of a lower voltage but it is actually turning down the control like CTRL <left arrow>. Can this be switched off?