cpufreq in the power manager

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 09/15/2009 12:24 AM, Simon Naunton wrote:
>> The bottom line is that the average GUI-using user should never ever
>> *ever* need to touch these settings.
> 
> You get to change this setting in the must user/GUI oriented OS OS X
> (at least in 10.4.x on PowerPC) though. Actually made quite a
> difference to battery life on my iBook G4 .

No, it doesn't.  It lets you choose some profiles like "maximum
performance" and "best battery life".  While it may, in the background,
amount to tweaking something similar to Linux's CPU frequency governor,
it's wrapped up in a nice abstraction that explains, in simple terms,
the *effect* of changing the setting.  A dropdown list marked "CPU
Frequency Governor" is just terrible UI.

Also, it doesn't allow you to specify the CPU's actual frequency range,
which was another request.

> To a certain extent I disagree with you. I am not an "average
> GUI-using user" and *understand* governors and how to change them from
> the command line, but I'll be bu**ered if I can remember off the top
> of my head exactly how to do it. I'd rather spend my linux time
> programming and actually using my computer for doing the stuff I
> bought it for rather than configuring it.

In a way, you're actually agreeing with me here.  You shouldn't have to
configure this sort of thing.  A knob for this in xfpm would just be
hiding a bug in the underlying system.

	-brian