Laptops

Suspending and hibernating laptops

In order to save battery power, you can put your laptop into one of a number of power-saving modes when you are not using it. The available modes are detailed below:

Suspending a laptop is like putting the computer to sleep. The computer will still be turned on and all of your work will be left open, but the laptop will use much less battery power. You can wake the computer by pressing a key or clicking the mouse.
Hibernating is turning the computer off completely while saving the current state of the computer (such as keeping all of your open documents). When you turn the computer back on after hibernating, all of your work should be restored as it was before hibernation. No power is used when the computer is hibernating.
Shutting down is turning the computer off completely, without saving the current state of the computer. No power is used when the computer is shut down.
Resuming is bringing the computer out of a power saving mode and back into normal operation. You can resume the computer from being suspended by pressing a keyboard button or by clicking the mouse. You can resume from being hibernated by pressing the power button on your computer.

You can manually put your computer into a power-saving mode by pressing System → Quit... and then pressing the appropriate button.


	Some computers may have problems going into certain power saving modes. The best way of checking if your computer can handle a power-saving mode is to try to switch to that mode and see if it behaves as you expected. Always make sure you save important documents before suspending or hibernating.

Fixing problems with suspending, hibernating and resuming

If your computer cannot suspend, hibernate or resume properly, there may be a number of things that you can try to get it working correctly.

Check the test report for your laptop, if one has been made (see the section called “Finding laptop testing reports”).
Ask for assistance through an Ubuntu support channel.

Power management settings

You may wish to change the power management settings of your laptop in order to help extend its battery life and reduce energy wastage.

Press System → Preferences → Power Management.
Change the settings as appropriate. Changes are applied instantly.

Displaying a screensaver may use more power than simply letting the screen go blank. Turning off the screensaver could slightly improve the battery life of your laptop.

Press System → Preferences → Screensaver.
Change the Screensaver theme to Blank screen. This will simply display a blank screen as a screensaver.


	When your laptop is running on battery, one of the biggest drains on power is the display. Turning the brightness of the display down could improve battery life significantly; many laptops allow you to do this by pressing Fn+F7 several times.

Touchpads

Most laptop computers come with a touchpad, which is used to control the mouse pointer. There are many ways of changing the way that the touchpad behaves; the most basic touchpad settings can be configured in the following way.

Press System → Preferences → Mouse.
Select the Touchpad tab.
Here you can change the touchpad settings to your liking. Changes should take effect immediately.

Some touchpads may be detected as normal mouse devices, even though they are actually touchpads. In this case, the Touchpad tab will not be available in the mouse preferences.


	See the community support pages for more information on touchpads.

Finding laptop testing reports

Many laptops are regularly tested by the Ubuntu community to ensure that various features work correctly. The results of these tests are available for you to read, and may offer insight into any problems you might be experiencing with your laptop.

See the Laptop Testing community support pages for a full listing of available laptop tests.

You can participate in laptop testing yourself by contacting the Laptop Testing Team.


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