How to increase battery life ? (laptop)

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-- How to increase battery life ? (laptop)

Posted by herozero on Sep-22-2005 22:40:

How to increase battery life ? (laptop)

I was wondering if i'd go mobile,

If i reduce the brightness of the laptop while its on battery mode, will it increase the laptop's battery life when going mobile ?

Of 3 choices of soundcard interface of:
1)firewire
2)PCMCIA
3)USB2.0 / USB1.0

Which of it drains the most battery ?

My specs : 1.6ghz p4 centrino, 756RAM.

My laptop is fairly new, but i could only get 2hrs maximum when running reason with internal soundcard. ( wi-fi, anti-virus disabled ).

please advice on battery life since im always out with the laptop without charger. thanks.

Posted by Reactance on Sep-23-2005 07:23:

eeem tricky i dont know ?
But i dont wanna be around when u doing a live gig and ur battery goes down, och ..

Posted by davidjames on Sep-23-2005 11:26:

Im having similiar problems with my laptop at the moment. I have just got an alienware with a p4 hyperthreading 3.06 processer, so it was obvious that it was going to eat my battery anyway.
However i find that the performance on battery is very slow compared to when i connect to mains, apparently a laptops performance is cut to around a 1/3 of its capability to save battery power when not plugged in. I believe there is a setting to adjust the performance when on battery in the control panel (which i cant find)..
I might contact alienware support unless any of the more technical miinded people on the forums can shed some light on the subject.

Posted by groundzero74 on Sep-23-2005 11:27:

Did you follow "procedure" before using the battery for the first time ?
If you buy a new laptop you should first fully charge the battery without powering On the computer, when it's full you should keep it charging for a while , only then should you start using it.
(it should be in the manual of the PC/battery)

It's also recommended that once in a while you drain the battery , and fully recharge again like the first time ...

this will really make a difference, at work people that didn't do this get 1.5hrs ... i get almost 2hrs... that's 25% !

And yes , lowering the screen brightness saves power.

Posted by herozero on Sep-23-2005 13:29:

Yeah. I noticed a significant difference when the brightness is reduced to its maximum level. Thats about an hour extra. weird.

Anyway, does PCMCIA drains battery life as much as USB2 ? how about firewire ?

thanks guys

Posted by aquila on Sep-23-2005 13:35:

I thought P4 and Centrino were two different processor types. Nonetheless processors guzzle a lot of power, as do the hard disks and screens. Most lappy manufacturers have power management schemes which limit the use of such resources to save battery life, but failing that Windows has a simple but solid power management system too.

You could also try and locate an external battery supply if you're not fussed about extra luggage.

Posted by PutBoy on Sep-23-2005 14:52:

Simply buy a new battery?

Posted by Nic on Sep-23-2005 15:59:

quote:
Originally posted by davidjames
Im having similiar problems with my laptop at the moment. I have just got an alienware with a p4 hyperthreading 3.06 processer, so it was obvious that it was going to eat my battery anyway.
However i find that the performance on battery is very slow compared to when i connect to mains, apparently a laptops performance is cut to around a 1/3 of its capability to save battery power when not plugged in. I believe there is a setting to adjust the performance when on battery in the control panel (which i cant find)..
I might contact alienware support unless any of the more technical miinded people on the forums can shed some light on the subject.

Should be under "power management" in "classic mode" control panel if i remember correctly, you can also get there by right clicking the desktop, going to screensaver, and then there should be a power management button or something

Posted by groundzero74 on Sep-23-2005 16:02:

Does the laptop have an ATI VGA card ? If yes... POWERPLAY (Advanced Display Settings) decreases the speed of your VGA card when running on batteries, this will have an effect on almost everything you do... If you have an NVIDIA card, check if they have someting similar...

Posted by erdega on Sep-23-2005 17:37:

Battery power is a major issue and I believe the only solution right now is to buy additional batteries budget permitting. i read recently that panasonic and intel are working on much more powerful batteries that could extend the power up to 8 hours

Posted by Nic on Sep-24-2005 02:27:

quote:
Originally posted by erdega
Battery power is a major issue and I believe the only solution right now is to buy additional batteries budget permitting. i read recently that panasonic and intel are working on much more powerful batteries that could extend the power up to 8 hours

i dunno about batteries but i know intel is working on lower power chips, Memrom which is due to come out in the second half of next year is supposed to be ~5W as opposed to the ~22W chips they have today

Posted by herozero on Sep-24-2005 07:59:

thanks guys.

Alright, guess its better off purchasing a battery.

BUT, my concern now is which interface of soundcard sucks up the most power.

whether its the PCMCIA, Firewire or USB2 ?
planning to get the echo indigo, but, do not know whether its a sucker or not.

Posted by Nic on Sep-24-2005 08:27:

quote:
Originally posted by herozero
thanks guys.

Alright, guess its better off purchasing a battery.

BUT, my concern now is which interface of soundcard sucks up the most power.

whether its the PCMCIA, Firewire or USB2 ?
planning to get the echo indigo, but, do not know whether its a sucker or not.

I'd go firewire because USB soundcards tend to be more cpu heavy than firewire ones, but i'm unsure as to what would use more power

Posted by SpecRadio on Sep-24-2005 18:26:

Use linux with WINE

Will save system resources making things produce less heat, saving the battery needed to cool those parts down.

WINE also runs programms faster than windows itself when configured properly

I find that funny. Programs that are made to run on an operating system, run better/faster in an emulator

Posted by superddman on Sep-25-2005 01:26:

quote:
Originally posted by groundzero74
Did you follow "procedure" before using the battery for the first time ?
If you buy a new laptop you should first fully charge the battery without powering On the computer, when it's full you should keep it charging for a while , only then should you start using it.
(it should be in the manual of the PC/battery)

I just got a new laptop and followed the manual exactly. It said to turn on the laptop as soon as the battery was in. So I don't think it makes a difference. When you have both the battery and the power cord plugged in at the same time, the laptop will only run on the powercord, not the battery (at least in my laptop).

Posted by Nic on Sep-25-2005 01:51:

quote:
Originally posted by SpecRadio
Use linux with WINE

Will save system resources making things produce less heat, saving the battery needed to cool those parts down.

WINE also runs programms faster than windows itself when configured properly

I find that funny. Programs that are made to run on an operating system, run better/faster in an emulator

Wine Is Not an Emulator

Posted by superddman on Sep-25-2005 04:02:

Posted by herozero on Sep-25-2005 09:23:

WINE, hmm, wouldn't wanna do that since i need majority of microsoft stuff for work.

yea followed the manual during the start, but battery life is pretty healthy since it claims to lst ( 3 hrs ) but, when i play REASON, it consumes much power, so, i don't get more than 2 hours of play. which may be annoying when you have the flow of the song, then u realize u have to shut the comp down.

does PCMCIA consumes battery like how USB2 does ?
please help me on that, thinking of purchasing a soundcard. urgent