At CeBIT 2007, Intel revealed their ‘Menlow’ plans and told a room full of reporters that we’d be seeing sub 4W PCs in 2008. In March 2008 I asked Intel if they were on target and they told me that I’d be surprised. I am!
I’m lucky enough to be testing a Menlow-based Gigabyte M528 (sample) this weekend and this evening I’ve been doing a battery life test. I’m listening to MP3′s streaming over Wifi through a java applet on the Firefox 3-based browser with the CPU averaging about 30% utilisation (yes, this java app isn’t the most efficient at playing MP3′s!) It’s been going for over 2.5hours on its 10wh battery. (backlight off)
For those that don’t know, the Gigabyte M528 is one of the first MIDs and it’s based on Intel’s Menlow platform; A PC platform. This baby can run Windows XP!
The test is still going. Check back to see how long the test goes for….
Updates:
I’ve just passed the 3hrs mark. I hope the battery dies soon as its 00:20 here and I need to go to bed!!
It’s 12:30 now. 3hrs 10 mins…still going…
I estimate that with no backlight, the device is running about 0.5W less than with the screen backlight on at 50%. When the test finishes I can estimate a backlight-on time.
3hrs 20 mins. That’s an average drain of 3W. Its getting into smartphone territory at this point.
3hrs 30 mins….
Battery light flashing at 3hrs 35 mins… not long to go now.
And there she goes. Test completed at 3hrs 35 mins.
Average battery drain (assuming the battery really is empty now.) 2.8W
I estimate that with the screen on, it would be about 3.3W which would give a run time of 3hrs.
Well done Intel! I’m off to bed now.
