Portable Low Power MAME Machine

[D_Harris]

The biggest issue for me when it comes to using a laptop for MAME is the battery issue.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to get the most number of hours out of a re-charge and was looking for advice.

One of the laptops I have is an IBM ThinkPad T22.

Since I presently run MAME from a Sandisk Cruzer drive plugged into the USB port of my desktop PC I was wondering if this was a plausible option for the ThinkPad.

I'm assuming it is not possible to use a laptop without a hard drive.(But correct me if I'm wrong).

Thanks a lot.

D_Harris

[Chad]

you should be able set an option to power off the hard drive in the laptop "when it is not in use" however windows will almost always use the harddrive even when you don't want to use it. There probably is a way to configure your operating system to not use any harddrive (google) while in "when not in use" mode and just run stuff off the usb, but you still have to power the cpu for mame which is what would drain the battery the most.

[CrazyKongFan]

Turning down the screen brightness (if yours has that option) and turning off sound would probably also help save battery power.