Power Saving
VirtualRPC-SA now includes a power saving component in the plugins folder as part of the HostServices plugin. This is designed to extend battery life on portable devices. Early versions of VirtualRPC-SA ran the processor at full speed all the time. Using power saving the CPU can be throttled down when RISC OS does not need full performance. The power saving component is activated by a the VAPower configure plug-in. By default Power Management is on, to turn it off double click on !Boot to open the configure application and click on VAPower. If you are running on a desktop machine that does not require power management then you can leave power management disabled.
VAPower configuration
Battery Manager
VirtualRPC-SA includes a battery manager that can be installed on the iconbar using the VAPower configuration plugin. You will need to reboot for the battery manager to be loaded. Once loaded you will see a battery icon on the iconbar to the left of the Display icon. By default this will show a drawing of a battery along with the current power level in percent (100% is a fully charged battery). Pressing SELECT over this icon will open a Portable power status window. This will show the current charge state, battery level and, if your hardware supports it, the remaining battery time. There are also two tick boxes that allow the battery manager to warn you when the battery level drops below 25% and again when it drops below 10%.
Battery manager
The battery manager has three different display modes.
- Current charge status (Black bar fully charged, green arrow charging, red arrow discharging).
- Current battery level in percent.
- Current estimated time remaining in hours and minutes (Shows a ? if this feature is not supported).
You can cycle through these three options by clicking ADJUST on the battery manager icon on the icon bar. You can also save your preferred icon as well as the status of the two power warnings by clicking on the OK button in the Portable power status window.