File size vs. battery life

[Kerry Newman]

Is there any correlation between file size and eating up lots of battery life on a small portable PC? Some of our sales reps are experiencing battery life shortages and someone said it was the size of one the files they use, around 15M. I googled around a bit and found nothing to confirm this "theory". Any thoughts?

 

[=ODIN=]

In Mythbusters style, I would say that is plausible. Anything that causes your computer to 'think' more makes it use more power. This is especially true in computers that have older spinning harddrives.


However -- and this is a big however. While large file sizes could be eating up their battery power, the usual suspects are outdated computers/outdated batteries -- neither of those are power efficient forever.

 

[Kerry Newman]

In Mythbusters style, I would say that is plausible. Anything that causes your computer to 'think' more makes it use more power. This is especially true in computers that have older spinning harddrives.


However -- and this is a big however. While large file sizes could be eating up their battery power, the usual suspects are outdated computers/outdated batteries -- neither of those are power efficient forever.

Thanks, good points.

 

[Macropod]

The only direct correlation between file size a power consumption would be related to the time spent reading/writing the file from/to disk. Of far more consequence is the number & complexity of the formulae in the workbook (more complex workbooks also tend to have larger file sizes) and how often the user does something that causes it to recalculate. Lots of scrolling around will also consume more power.

 

[Kerry Newman]

The only direct correlation between file size a power consumption would be related to the time spent reading/writing the file from/to disk. Of far more consequence is the number & complexity of the formulae in the workbook (more complex workbooks also tend to have larger file sizes) and how often the user does something that causes it to recalculate. Lots of scrolling around will also consume more power.

Thanks Paul!