CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor

If you want to prolong the battery time on the laptop you have to make the CPU use as little power as possible. This can be done by forcing the CPU to run at its lowest clock frequency. By default Ubuntu uses the Ondemand frequency scaling policy, and you have no control over that. The CPU will alternate between 2 to 3 different clock frequencies depending on the CPU load.
If you follow this howto you can get control over the clock frequency scaling policy of your CPU with a few mouse clicks.

You can enable the applets full potential by doing one of the these:

1)
Change the permissions on the program cpufreq-selector:
sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector

2)
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets
and answer “Yes” to the question regarding setting the suid of the cpufreq-selector executable.

If you left click on the CPU Frequency Monitor Applet, you can now select a clock frequency or choose the modes Conservative, Ondemand, Performance, or Powersave.

BIOS update 1.13

A couple of days ago I updated/flashed the BIOS firmware on my Zepto 3215W to version 1.13. It went good, and i hasn't caused any trouble yet. See the Changelog.txt at the link below.

WARNING: Updating the BIOS wrong can brick your laptop. Update only if you have a problem or know what you are doing.

Howto:

1. Download the CD-image (.ISO) from Zepto's FTP-server here.
2. Burn the image to a CD. I use a CD-RW for that purpose.
3. Make sure your laptop have a fully charged battery and are connected to the AC-mainline.
4. Reboot your laptop and boot from the CD. Try hitting F12 if your CD-drive isn't first in the boot device priority.
5. When the CD boots up it will automatically overwrite the old firmware without any confirmation.
6. To confirm that you are running the new firmware, go into the BIOS-menu and check the current version.