Awkward Linux Power Management With Xen

For the Intel-based Hewlett-Packard EliteBook, when simply switching the battery power consumption with and without the Xen support on the same kernel release, a noticeable power management difference was evident. While idling, the Xen kernel was burning through about 10% more power than the vanilla kernel.

When running the OpenArena game, the Xen-enabled kernel was going through about 8% more power.

There was also a slight degradation in the Intel Sandy Bridge graphics performance with the Xen support.