i know this is a frequently asked question.
After trying win 8.1 and latest opensuse i feel ubuntu 13.10 to consume much power.
Lenovo B590 notebook with 1TB 5200rpm hdd, 8 gigs of ram, i5 2.5GHz turbo 3.2GHz, HD4000. With 64bit edition.
I have built and installed latest powertop, changes are permanent, installed 01.org latest graphics drivers, latest updates. That helped me to get additional half hour. from 1h 30min to 2hours.
And I have still 1 hour less time from less usage than on opensuse and win8.1. On both OS i can browse facebook, listen song in HD on youtube, develop with netbeans, check my emails with OnDemand governor (on windows balanced) for 3 hours ~ 3h 15 minutes. Or watch 2 hours of full hd movie in vlc.
On ubuntu i have 2 hours and 14 minutes for playing music in rhythm box browsing facebook and writing this question. Or watch about 1 hour 15 minutes of full hd movie.
Powertop reports in this moment 12.5W discharge (powersave governor). Most consuming apps is pulseaudio, rhythm box, chromium browser, sometimes device back-light (set to 75%, back-light levels fixed in grub), KSysGuard repors 4-13% CPU usage.
Unnecessary services disabled on startup. From cooler i am getting freeze air, so its probably not overheat issue, like with AMD and wrong drivers.
This always happens with me only on ubuntu distros like xubuntu or lubuntu or linux mint(it was a bit better in battery management).
Love you for help, I know there is some solutions not listed above, please help me.