Tips: Saving Battery Power

[chrisclick]

Ok most laptop users including me have all had those time were you on a plane, Ferry, Car or train and you have your laptop and "poof" The battery has run out of juice and your laptop had died on you while trying complete that very important doument for the next day.

Follow these tips to make the most of your battery juice and stay alive!

1. Turn down the brightness on your screen...


Every laptop has a control to turn down the screens brightness even Mac's. Usually by a Fn key on your keyboard, This is increadible on how much power it saves!
2. Take out unused components...

Sureley you dont need all those PC cards and USB mice and keyboards even speakers. Turn them of by disabling them from the laptop you are using or even remove them from the laptop. PC cards you could remove then disable the PC Card slot.
3. Add Ram...

Yes you read it right. Add more ram. If you have low ram like say 256MB boost it up to 500MB+ or even higher than 750MB this will cut down on the amount of things that go into the HDD to remember they will go to the RAM and it will slow down the usage of the HDD motor and save you a massive amount of power. Suprisingly but down on the ware of the HDD motor!

4. Use DVD and CD drives only when you have too...

This will achually do 2 things save power on your laptop by a little amount and then cut down the chance of ware and tear on your CD/DVD motor and laser.
5. Keep out of extream temp...

Keeping the laptop out of very hot areas can save a little power by the fan isnt going around so much at a fast and constant speed. Also this reduces the chance of a failure with the fan.
6. Turn off unused WiFi or Bluetooth...

Turning off WiFi and/or Bluetooth when your not using it can save some power there are some lights to tell you if its either on or off but sometimes there is no light to tell you.
7. Turn off your hard disk...

There should be an option to tunr of your harddisk after so many minutes or hours. This can save some power but windows has a habit of accessing your harddrive at random.
8. Harddrive spin down...

There are small applications out on the net to use on you laptop to spin down the harddrive so it does not go to fast if you turn down the speed (SPIN) it should save some or little power.-----------------------------------------------------------
Tip 4. Put to the test

After installed the Belkin and Open Office on my laptop which was running on a full 100% charged batter I noticed it had 2.00 hour time then after using the CD it ran down to 57 minuets leaving me with a correct tip for number 4.
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All information and tips were researched from various sites including
Microsoft.com
PCworld.com
notebookreview.com
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Thank you for reading this short post of how to save battery power

P.S. regarding tip 5 about the failure of the fan. If this does occour please contact your local retailer or laptop repair centre (PcWorld?).
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|Chris|:crazy:

[chrisclick]

More tips on other thing will be posted soon. Please feel free to add more onto this post.

And if a mod could please sticky this post... Thank you

[senocular]

turn off wifi if not using it... and that RAM thing only goes so far. The more RAM, the more power needed to use it. However, as you said, RAM usage is preferred over the hard disk. So theres a sweet spot in there for RAM - dont have too little and dont have too much.

[MTsoul]

Yeah wifi is hilariously power consuming.

[Vexir]

http://www.laptop-battery.org/batterytips.html

[senocular]

http://www.laptop-battery.org/batterytips.html
Yes, mutilating the battery pack probably won't help :lol:

[Vexir]

I'm sure quite a few people have tried. :sure:

[Maxtr0sity]

Enable HD spin-down mode. There's no need for my HD to spin at 7200RPM while reading a mile long thread.

[senocular]

Also, some (most?) laptops have utilities that help regulate battery usage for things like this. Find out if yours has one and tweak to make it work best for your usage.

[ya3]

Hmmyeah... I've got this thing called 'Battery Miser'. It once made my CPU run at 200MHz :|

It's also got this option to "Turn Off Hard Disks after X minutes". What actually happens? What if it turns off while I'm, say, just staring at a whole bunch of text, not doing anything?

[Maxtr0sity]

Turning off HD isn't as amazing as it sounds unfortunately. When the HD is spun down, your computer uses what it has in the RAM, however, the instance the HD is needed, it'll take a second or two to spin up and retrieve the info. Now, that should work perfect, however, Windows (and pretty much all other OS's) tend to access the HD at random times. These access triggers the HD to spin up even if you're not doing anything, which is extremely annoying.

[hl]

Hmmyeah... I've got this thing called 'Battery Miser'. It once made my CPU run at 200MHz :|

It's also got this option to "Turn Off Hard Disks after X minutes". What actually happens? What if it turns off while I'm, say, just staring at a whole bunch of text, not doing anything?
You won't notice the HD turn off.. everythings operating from the RAM.. however the harddrive isn't taking all the energy to spin.

[Anogar]

I hate laptops. :P

[ya3]

I hate laptops. :P
Thank you.

[hl]

I love laptops. They can be expensive even if it provides less power compared to a PC... but its well worth it. I love the portability. I love the size. The power's quite fine for me. My only reservation for Desktops is the fact that laptops generally have shorter lifespans. I can't stand sitting at a desk ALL day though. I love being able to move around.

:love:

[Maxtr0sity]

You won't notice the HD turn off.. everythings operating from the RAM.. however the harddrive isn't taking all the energy to spin.
I definitely notice my 7200RPM drive turn off. 90% of the time, it's the only thing making noise in my room.

[Templarian]

With the WiFi turn off bluetooth if for some wierd reason its on. Bluetooth seems to use more power than wifi... kinda wierd bluetooth 30ft wifi 300ft... must be how it works (i only know becuase i can watch it on my pocket pc when it slowly drains the battery life in half).

[Vexir]

Does a dell laptop have bluetooth capability if its got a bluetooth LED in the indicator area next to the power button?

[chrisclick]

Well as my laptop hasnt got wifi or bluetooth im quite lucky there, The harddrive spin down is a good one Ill add that and the wifi and bluetooth way.

At the moment im trying to run down the laptop power so i can charge it up again :|

[Theros]

right... isn't kinda sad that my 4-5 year old dell laptop gets 2-2:30 hours of battery life which is equivalent to many modern laptops? heh... and that's with the wifi on and full brightness!

[Maxtr0sity]

Does a dell laptop have bluetooth capability if its got a bluetooth LED in the indicator area next to the power button?
Mine has one too. Unless you specifically configured a bluetooth addon when you bought it, the light is useless unless you spend $30 and get a chip, which will then turn on when the light is on.

[Vexir]

Chris, not having wifi on a laptop almost defeats the purpose..

[evildrummer]

It will all be better when MRAM is made publicly commercial in large amounts but that could be a while seeming though the last MRAM I saw was only 64 MB. But soon therell be ones nearing 30 gb, I hope.

[chrisclick]

Its old but not very old its an samsung VM8000 so I use the belkin wireless network adapder ;)