Wakes processor way to often than needed

Binary package hint: xfce4-systemload-plugin

Ubuntu has set the goal for mobile devices to last longer on a single battery charge. This can be done by several things, of which keeping the amount of wakening the processor to a minimum. Tickless-kernels was a great move forward and now they advice to have around 50 interrupts per second for a fully but idle desktop.

xfce4-systemload-plugin 1:0.4.2-1ubuntu3, which has been released for hardy and intrepid, did 4 interrupts per second. This gives the user every 250 milliseconds an update of the systems load. This is a reasonable value for something that has to present non-crucial and more or less real-time info.

xfce4-systemload-plugin 1:0.4.2-3ubuntu1, which has been released for karmic and lucid, is doing 12 interrupts per second. This makes it almost the second top-cause for wakening the processor after the kernels function itself. It also takes as much as a quarter of the "allowed" 50 interrupts. Giving this non-crucial info every 85 milliseconds is not reasonable since the user will not gain any informative info. If you program gets stuck and your processor goes up to 100% load, you'll notice this in the same way on a 250 millisecond update as on a 85 millisecond update. I think this is just unnecessary usage of processor-cycles and power.

Possible solutions:
1) Set the value back to a 4Hz update, like it has been.
2) Provide a simple option to let the user chose the update frequency, like already done in the xfce4-sensors-plugin.