Any laptop would definitely lose its charm if it requires frequent visits to the charging points and this is a fact that most Laptop owners hate in their laptops. Today this scenario is getting more complicated. As laptops are getting faster and as their graphics support increases the charge consumption also increases.
Most modern laptops are equipped with powerful graphics and video cards to help increase gaming and video performance. However these cards drain a lot of your battery charge. In many cases the extra graphic support is not needed for basic computing applications yet the graphic unit run in the background gulping a considerable amount of battery charge.
Every user of such laptops might have wished they had an option to switch off the graphic support unit when not needed and thereby have more battery life to perform basic activities such as word processing, running their email client and so on. These activities take a lot less hardisk usage and thus lesser charge consumption.
However users of Ubuntu installed laptops can avail a solution for this problem. Now Ubuntu has software that allows you to actually shut down your extra graphics card when you don’t need it. Yes you heard it right. What we are talking about here is Bumblebee Software for Ubuntu.
Bumblebee package is a new tool that is available for Ubuntu powered laptops having NVIDIA Optimus Technology. Earlier users with the NVIDIA Optimus technology on their Windows based laptops were able to easily use the feature without the aid of any tool. But it was not the case with Linux based OS like Ubuntu.
However Bumblebee aims to change all that. Bumblebee is very handy as it allows users to save more power while doing activities such as word-processing and basic internet surfing. These are the applications where any user would love a longer battery life coupled to it.
Bumblebee has a unique feature that is highly appreciable to users. The software can actually make use of both the internal graphics and the dedicated graphics at the same time for multiple tasks. Thus it can make optimum use of either. The internal graphics is required for all small applications like normal video viewing and basic file usages.
But Bumblebee lacks a major and critical functionality. It does not have the ability of Auto switching i.e. the software cannot intelligently switch between the available graphic sources as per the requirement. This functionality is however available in Windows.
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