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2011-04-15

Reviving your laptop's battery

Battery life is one of the most influential things regarding your mobility, but laptops with a longer battery life usually cost accordingly. What to do if you don’t have the money?
What makes a laptop mobile? The weight and volume that allow carrying it from one place to other of course, but most importantly – the fact that it doesn’t need a constant electrical supply and is not tied to the electricity network, but comes with its own sony vaio pcg-505 dc adapter . This is exactly the reason why battery time, or “battery life” are such an important factor influencing the true mobility you’re receiving.
Some laptops come with a guarantee (that they not sure they can uphold) for a significantly longer battery life, but most laptops these days offer a typical life of two to five hours. How long you’ll actually receive? That’s up to you.
What affects the battery time?
The laptop’s ibm thinkpad a30 laptop battery time is affected by a variety of factors, mostly having to do with the work load placed on the various components.
The most electricity consuming component in the computer is usually the screen. The bigger it is and the more its rear lighting is stronger, the more his electricity consumption increases and the battery life shortens. Other electricity consumers are the processor (CPU) and the graphic inserter (GPU), that when required to work, consume more electricity. These are usually followed by the hard drive and wireless communication.
The differences between the various laptops in terms of their TOSHIBA pa3285u-1brs battery time, mostly relate to these factors. For example computers that specifically designed to provide a longer battery life usually utilize LED screen which are economical and a poorer processor (LV/ULV) which is a little slower but its electricity consumption is significantly lower.
Integrated graphic accelerators consume less electricity that accelerators installed on a separate card (Descrete), when the latter offer better performance. The new Intel mobile platforms (Centrino 2) and AMD offer a combination between the two methods with the option to switch between them during the use according to priority – more performance or more dell inspiron 1525 battery time.
It’s important to know about batteries
The first thing you should do to ensure you receive as long as possible battery time, is to choose your computer wisely. All manufacturers publish data regarding the battery time on their websites, in the technical specification of each computer. This data should be taken with a limited guarantee and cross reference with independent data received from field tests technology journalists hold and are plentiful online.
Note that a large part of laptops can be purchased with a “regular” batter or a “strong” battery that can often provide almost double the work time, at a cost of a few extra dollars and a few more grams. If dell inspiron 1545 battery time is important to you, you’re better off purchasing the computer with the stronger batter. It is acceptable to distinguish between batteries according to the Cell number it includes; most computers can be acquired with 6 cells and 9 cell and some cases there are also 4, 8 and 12 cells. The method of calculation changes from one computer to the other, so there’s no point doing the arithmetic.
And by the way, if your mobile is a year or two years old or more and you feel the battery time is shortening – it is more than likely you’re right. The charging power of the FUJITSU fpcbp83 battery decreases as time goes by and the number of charges increases.
Using work settings
Most laptops from recent years, support various technologies to reduce the electricity consumption of various components, so the computer knows to adapt the action of the various components operation with requirements (for example, reducing the speed of the processors clock while writing a document in the word processor when its not fully necessary). Windows systems allow operating these technologies automatically and most manufacturers provide along with the computer a dedicated software tool to mange power.
Usually, all you need to do is look for the hp pavilion tx1000 battery icon in the corner of the screen, click and choose Power saver mode (If you don’t have such an icon, look inside the control panel, Power Options – Advanced and change the appropriate settings). If you’re not “stressed” you can choose the “Balanced” mode in which the OS balanced between the need for performance and TOSHIBA satellite u405-s2854 battery life. When you’re connected to the electricity network you can choose the “High Performance” mode.
Proper use of the screen
To reduce power consumption of the screen it is recommended that you first switch it to the lowest clarity level and then gradually increase it and let your eyes adjust. Stop at the lowest clarity level you can handle without straining your eyes.
Note that the optimal clarity level is also affected by environmental conditions. For example, if you’re at a well lit location it is recommended to look for shadow. The viewing angle of the screen is also very significant – if you adjust it at a slightly sharper angle you’ll need a higher clarity setting.
Turning off and disconnecting plugins
If you find yourself on a flight or a long drive without an internet connection you won’t be able to surf so there’s no reason for you not to switch off the communication plug ins of the computer. Most new computers have a special switch that allows turning off their WiFi option and others have an appropriate keys combination (usually FN+F2 OR FN+F5, search documentation).
In the same way, it is recommended in case needed (meaning when you see the vaio pcg-505 series battery is running low), to disconnect any plug in that receives power through the USB interface, such as a Disk on Key, External driver or optical mouse. The optical driver should only be used when necessary.
Appropriate use of software
Some applications deplete the dell inspiron 1545 ac adapter battery quickly: viewing a movie in full screen mode, running a game, an application that requires intensive action by the disk such as virus scanning or defragmentation. Delay what you can, make sure you close every unnecessary software and when you finish using a certain program shut it down before moving on to the next.  If you’re right at the end of the batter and are not connected to the net you can also turn off your antivirus program.
What you can’t shut down or don’t want to give up, can be “minimized”. Viewing video on part of the screen instead of a full screen consumes less power. Power consumption while playing music is a function of volume control – so turn it down.
If you’re using software that performs background scans of the computer, such as Google Desktop Search or Copernic, turn it off because they work the hard disk overtime. It is also recommended to turn off Windows Index service that does the same. To do that, type in services.msc in the command line and press Enter to enter Windows services list. Search for Indexing Service (XP) or Windows Search (Vista) right click and choose stop.
If you’re not using Windows built in search tools, it is recommended to make the following change:  begin as previously explained and when you reach the appropriate service right click it choose Properties and change the setting from Automatic to Manual and confirm. This change will also enhance performance and save hp pavilion dv1000 series battery time.
A few other things that could help
Defragment the disk often. Of course while it is plugged in. the defragmentation will accelerate the hard drive and improve performance as well as reduce the range of the disks operation and thus prolonging battery life.
Install an additional memory. The appropriate memory volume (1GB or more for XP and at least 2GBfor Vista) reduce use of virtual memory and thus minimize use of the hard drive and prolong Compaq presario 2500 battery life.
Clean the battery connections. Every few months remove the battery and clean its metal contacts with an alcohol soaked cloth.
Don’t count on the StandBy mode. It uses less power but will still deplete the dell vostro 1400 battery slowly. Execute a proper shut down.
more battery tags: Dell inspiron 1521 battery, hp pavilion zd7000 battery
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