Powertop : saves your laptop battery

If you use your laptop in hotspot frequently you must have known for how much long your battery will last, well if you use this application you can know so much about your battery life and you can make better use of your battery. Not only this application tells you the amount of applications that consume your battery it can also tells you what to do to conserve your battery. So that you can extend the use of your battery life by giving you info of any applications that consumes too much power.

when using laptop try to turn off your bluetooth as it consumes too much battery life.

you can install powertop by using apt-get

jacobian@jacobian-HP:~$ sudo apt-get install powertop
[sudo] password for jacobian:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libflashsupport
Use ‘apt-get autoremove’ to remove them.
Suggested packages:
cpufrequtils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
powertop
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 27.1kB of archives.
After this operation, 410kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://id.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main powertop 1.9-2ubuntu1 [27.1kB]
Fetched 27.1kB in 1s (22.1kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package powertop.
(Reading database … 157149 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking powertop (from …/powertop_1.9-2ubuntu1_i386.deb) …
Setting up powertop (1.9-2ubuntu1) …

and then run powertop by typing sudo powertop in your console.

playing mp3 using mplayer

When you want to play mp3 files you will likely to use amarok, banshee, rythmbox etc.
but now I just discover that I can use mplayer for playing mp3. it just simple. so I just have to type this command in my console

jacobian@jacobian-HP:~/Music/michael buble – its time$ mplayer -loop 0 home.mp3
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-56 (Family: 15, Model: 72, Stepping: 2)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing home.mp3.
Audio file file format detected.
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 160.0 kbit/11.34% (ratio: 20000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback…
Cannot sync MAD frame 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%
A: 226.7 (03:46.6) of 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%

Playing home.mp3.
Audio file file format detected.
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 160.0 kbit/11.34% (ratio: 20000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback…
Cannot sync MAD frame 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%
A: 226.7 (03:46.6) of 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%

Playing home.mp3.
Audio file file format detected.
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 160.0 kbit/11.34% (ratio: 20000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback…
A:   7.1 (07.0) of 227.0 (03:47.0)  1.4%

the “-loop  0″ option will play the file over and over again.

Well I hope you like using mplayer to play your mp3 files.