So you own a laptop/netbook but you're a little disappointed with the battery life. I mean, who wouldn't want their laptop to run longer on a charge? Well there are some simple things you can do to allow your computer to run longer on a single charge. Some of these are obvious, others not so much.
Remove the CD/DVD from the drive. A lot of laptop owners keep a disc in their drive at all times. Unless you're actually accessing the disc take it out. Spinning the disc takes a lot of energy. Yes, most disc drives stop the disc when it's not being accessed, but every once in a while Windows will spin the disc again. This is wasted energy.
Turn down the screen brightness. This one is pretty obvious. The dimmer the screen the less energy it's using. Of course, brighter screens are easier to read. So it's all about finding a balance - the dimmest screen level you're still able to comfortably read.
Turn down the volume, or better yet mute the sound altogether. Playing sounds requires energy, and most of the sounds in Windows aren't necessary. Do you really need a click every time you select a folder? Another option is to disable the sound scheme in Control Panel. This will shut off all the "Windows" sounds but will keep sound enabled for other apps like the web.
Change your desktop background color. Did you know the color of your desktop affects how much energy your computer is using? Darker colors require more energy than lighter colors. So black requires the most power and white requires the least. Consider setting your desktop to a lighter color, light gray, light blue, etc.
Disable unnecessary processes. Every running process takes CPU time which translates into energy from the battery. So the more processes and services you can disable the better. Of course, don't disable anything you need. Perfect programs to remove which aren't required (and in fact can degrade your system performance) are so called "speed launchers." Adobe uses them, Apple uses them, Office uses them, etc.
Check your power options. The sooner your computer enters standby the more power it saves. The sooner it shuts down the monitor the more power it saves.
Disable your screen saver. I know what you're thinking, the screen saver saves me energy, why would I want to disable it? Well as it turns out screen savers use more energy than they save. Most screen savers display some sort of animation which requires CPU power, which again requires battery power. Even if the screen saver displays a blank screen, this is wasted power (see above item on desktop color - black uses more energy than white). Instead of a screen saver set your power options to turn off the monitor.
Disable Windows animations. Animations are things like when a Window slowly moves to the taskbar, or a combo box or menu slides open, something fades into or out of view, etc. These animations require CPU power, so disabling them will extend your battery life. If you're running Vista of Win7, disable the aero desktop. If you disable theses animations you might even like Windows more. You might be surprised how much more productive you can be on a computer when you're not constantly waiting for little animations to dismiss the dialog you closed.
Reduce hard drive access. Spinning a hard drive and accessing the data requires a lot of energy. So do what you can to minimize disk access. Every once in a while plug your computer in to the wall and run a defrag. Eliminating unnecessary startup programs will go a long way to reducing disk access as well.
Beware of graphically intensive applications. Playing games or watching movies both use a lot of energy. Most computer owners take video for granted. They assume since TVs have been around for generations why couldn't a computer display video. As it turns out video is one of the most intensive tasks for a computer. Even watching small videos on youtube requires a lot of energy. I'm not saying don't do it, but be aware tasks like this will drain energy from your battery.
No comments:
Post a Comment