You are dynamic. You are mobile – thanks to your laptop. That wonder machine lets you carry your work, even your office desk with you. But until the power runs out. Our days are quite pretty, compared to yesteryears bulky power-hungry beasts, still battery life hasn’t improved a lot. So, if you don’t want to mind about the horror of power loss amidst, pay attention. We at BlogZamana have got you covered. This little tweaks, which will take minutes to setup, will help you save enough battery juice for that last minute email at the airport lounge.
Adjust brightness
Yes, with LED screens the situation is better compared to the bulky power sucking CCFL displays, still displays drain a major chunk of your battery. More the resolution, more power it requires – quite not a surprise, your new retina mac has less battery time than the standard one.
Try to keep your brightness as low as possible. Most laptops have dedicated brightness control keys on their keyboard, so changing it is trivial. Avoid working in brightly lit areas, for you shall need to ramp up your brightness to full for legibility. Look for a place with soft ambient light – you can reduce your brightness as per your comfort to a great level. And it is good for your eyes too… just don’t lower it too much.
If there is a socket near your reach, plug in your machine
We know, you hate wires. But your laptop likes it. You might be scared that Li-ion batteries explode when overcharged, that’s true but laptop batteries stop charging after they are full. Instead your system is powered by AC supply. Save the juice when you will need to shoot off that important email at the airport lounge.
Kill power hungry or erring background processes
Modern CPUs come with power saving technologies that scale their power demand as per load. When your system is idling, CPU gets into a low power mode to save energy. However, background apps such as – torrent clients, bitcoin miners and distributed computing applications (SETI@Home, GIMPS), that consume idle CPU cycles kick into action and bring back your CPU into full speed. Removing such apps from your system, or at least stopping them while on battery will save a lot of power.
Keep a look on misbehaving or hanging applications, they simply keep the processor busy for no reason and thus gobble up battery juice. Open the task manager and look for apps with status “Not Responding”. Try closing the task through the “End task” button. If that doesn’t work right click on the application and select “Go to process”. There again right click on the selected process and select “End process”
Disable screensavers and set aggressive display timings
Don’t let those bubbles loose while you have left your laptop for a cup of cappuccino. Screensavers are a waste of precious system resources. Disable them. Under windows, you can find them under Personalization category of Control Panel or alternatively, via right click on the desktop. Set your screensaver to none.
Instead, set to dim your display in 3-5 minutes of idling. In Windows, you can create power plans to automatically tune your computer for power savings. You can find this under “Control Panel” > “Power”. Select “Change plan settings” to edit display dimming timing, time before your laptop is put to sleep.
Turn off unnecessary radios, appliances and software instances
Simple. Switch off your Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth, data modems and everything else not in use. Most laptops have a dedicated hotkey or better a hardware button to turn those off.
Windows can automatically power down idling USB devices. Selective suspend of USB devices must be enabled form the advanced sections of the aforementioned power plan settings.
Also, closing down unnecessary browser tabs, media player instances and other graphics intensive programs will ease the load on your CPU and thus result in power savings.
Never forget to fully charge your laptop prior leaving your home or office desk. Always carry an adapter in your back, keep one at home and optionally one at work too. Remember these tips, so that you never get hiccups while shooting off that last minute mail!