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.

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yeah.

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

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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.

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.

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-= Insert witty comment here ... =-

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

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yeah.

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.

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-~-

Simply buy a new battery?

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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

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...

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-= Insert witty comment here ... =-

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

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

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.

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yeah.