Desktop/Whiteboards/PowerManagementDefaults

Some of the basics are:

• When the lid is closed, the computer must suspend
• Just because I have music playing, my laptop must not refuse to suspend when I ask it to
• When the user changes the brightness, he doesn't appreciate if the computer turns it right back down again (or vice-versa up again)

There are only a few situations where I can see not wanting to suspend on lid close:

• when docked
• when using an external display (watching a movie on a TV)
• and, of course, when explicitly asked not to

Other details:

• The cursor should not blink (GTK+ has a cursor-blink-timeout setting for stopping any cursor blinking after a configurable time without user interaction)

Idea pool:

• http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/power/good_practices.html

...

Dreams:

• Suspend to do a simultaneous (transparent) Hibernate (to cope with battery death).
  • Automatically wake up after 30 minutes on suspend and immediately power off the machine (leaving the hiberated image).
• Laptops: waste no more power on "AC" than on battery... the "AC" can be coming from a battery bank and inverter
• Try to work out a sensible protocol for when unneeded BT/WLAN/GPRS radios can be powered off (though this rubs against "just works" Bluetooth/Wifi association magic).