Powertop

I got this one from my manager , it is a must-have for Ubuntu on laptops.
Run "apt-get install powertop " to install.
Simply run "sudo powertop" when on battery .
It gives you useful suggestions on conserving power.

Hardy Heron and VMware annoyance

Ever tried using Hardy with VMware workstation or Server ?

Try launching a windows VM (virtual machine) inside and switch it to full-screen or quick view mode .
Then come back to Hardy , you will find that the Shift and Control keys don't work anymore !
Switch context to the windows VM again , they seems to work fine inside it.
This problem is intermittent and the only way I can fix it is to run "setxkbmap" (I got this from Launchpad Bug #195982)

Running setxkbmap alleviates the problem only for a short while.
It will reappear intermittently , on switching contexts.

I use my laptop with a secondary monitor . My laptop runs Hardy and my production (official) machine is a windows xp guest running on VMware .
I have the guest use the secondary monitor in full-screen mode and Hardy takes my laptop screen.
To switch contexts (which I do often) , I simply move my mouse cursor to the other screen (they are spanned with nvidia twinview)

Since there seems to be no solution for this bug yet , I have created a custom launcher in the gnome panel for running setxkbmap (See image) . I click the launcher whenever the damn bug pops up !