How to Save Laptop Battery Power When You Really Need it
You’ve
got a five-hour flight from Los Angeles to New York City,
and one battery in your laptop. You’ve got work to
do, DVDs to watch, and games to play. How are you going to
get that battery to last? Well, hidden inside (and outside)
your computer are lots of tricks to help you.
Dimming
Your Screen
Your
screen and hard drive use up more battery power than any
other parts of your computer. You can dim down your screen
to a point where your eyes still feel comfortable but you
also save energy. On most laptops, you first dim the screen
by holding down the “Fn” key (go ahead and find
it because you may never have used it before). Then you look
for a key on your laptop that either has a picture of a sun
or a half-moon. (On my Sony Vaio that key happens to be F5.)
If you find it, go ahead and hit it while still holding down
the Fn key. A brightness adjustment box should show up on
your screen. If you can’t find a key with a sun or
half-moon on it, try hitting your various arrow keys while
holding down Fn, to see if that works.
Turning
Off Your Screen Altogether
If
dimming your screen is good for saving battery life, turning
it off when you’re not using it is even better. To
turn off your screen, we’re going to have to go into
some settings in the Control Panel. You’ll soon see
these settings are not only good for turning off screens;
they perform a whole host of battery saving functions.
Click
on Start, then on Control Panel. If your Control Panel is
shown in the “Category View,” click first on
Performance and Maintenance, then on Power Options. If your
Control Panel is in Classic View, simply click on the Power
Options icon. Next click on the Power Schemes Tab. Underneath
where it says Running on Batteries and across from where
it says Turn Off Monitor, choose how quickly you’d
like your monitor to shut off when you’re not actively
using it.
That
Power Options Properties box we just opened brings us to
a whole host of other enticing options we can employ on our
cross-country flight!
Choosing
a Power Scheme
Windows
XP offers two Power Schemes appropriate for laptops on the
go. These are Portable/Laptop and Max Battery. They can both
be chosen in the Power Schemes tab of the Power Options Properties
box. Both power schemes conserve battery power. But Portable
laptop adjusts what it conserves to the amount of power you
need at the time, while Max Battery is much less flexible.
It keeps your computer at a very low constant power rate
no matter what you may be doing. So if you are planning on
watching a DVD on that flight, which uses a lot of battery
power, I don’t recommend using the Max Battery power
scheme. It might not give you enough power.
Each
power scheme also has its own settings for when the monitor
and hard disks should be turned off. Remember that both are
huge energy hogs, and that both the monitor and hard disk
remain on longer under Portable/Laptop than they do under
Max Battery.
The
power scheme you choose also determines how long the computer
will wait to go into Standby mode or Hibernate after remaining
idle. Standby conserves energy because it turns off your
hard disk and monitor. However, whatever you were working
on at the time stays in memory (RAM) instead of being saved
safely to your hard drive. The upside of Standby, though,
is that when you press any key your computer will come out
of the mode rather quickly.
Hibernation
saves even more energy because it saves your work to the
hard drive and then shuts your computer down almost all the
way. Inherently, of course, this means it takes the computer
longer to wake up to its normal state, but when everything
does come back on, it looks the same as before. To switch
your computer to Standby mode manually, click on Start, then
on Turn off Computer, then on Standby. To make your computer
Hibernate manually, click on Start and Turn off Computer
again, but this time hold down the Shift key down afterward.
The Standby key switches to “Hibernate.” Click
it and your computer will go into Hibernation mode.
Creating
Your Own Profiles
Maybe
you don’t like the two power saving choices Windows
gives you. Maybe you want to create custom ones to suit your
own needs. You can do that! I created one for “Long
Plane Rides.” I adjusted the settings in the Power
Options Properties box. For instance, I indicated I wanted
my monitor to turn off after only 2 minutes of idle time,
and my hard disks after 3 minutes. Then I clicked on Save
As, named my profile, and clicked OK. Now maybe the battery
will last even longer on the flight.
Let’s
go through some other choices in the Power Options Properties
box. Under the Alarm tab, you can check boxes to either be
alerted when your battery is low and/or when your battery
is critical. You can even use the slider to make your own
determination of just what is low and what is critical. Then
you can click on Alarm Action to tell your computer to, for
instance, sound an alarm or go into Standby mode when those
moments are reached.
Under
the Advanced tab, you can choose what you want your laptop
to do when you close the lid. You can choose it to go into
Standby mode, Hibernation, or even do nothing if you wish.
You can also choose what you’d like the computer to
do when you hit the power button.
If
you’re interested in using your laptop’s Hibernation
feature you should check the box under the Hibernation tab
that says Enable Hibernation.
Turn
Off Wireless Network Card
Your
wireless card can also be a drain on your battery’s
resources, so disable it if you don’t need it. (You
don’t need it obviously on a plane, for instance.)
If your laptop has a wireless card, simply take it out. If
your laptop has wireless built-in, you can disable it in
Windows XP by clicking on Start and going to your Control
Panel. In Category View, click on Network and Internet Connections,
then Network Connections. In Classic View, simply click on
Network Connections. Once you’re there, right click
on the wireless connection you’re using, and click
on Disable. You can also disable your wireless network card
through the Device Manager. Right click on My Computer and
left click on Properties. Click on the Hardware tab and then
the Device Manager button. Next, click on the small black
cross next to where it says Network Adapters. Locate your
wireless network adapter, right click on it, and left click
on Disable.
You
can also left click on Properties instead (after you right
click on your network adapter), click on the Power Management
tab, and check the box that says “Allow the computer
to turn off this device to save power.”
Some
newer laptops with the Intel Mobile Pentium® chip have
a button somewhere on the laptop itself, for instance on
the front, to enable you to easily turn your wireless on
or off. You may have to check your laptop’s manual
to find out if you have a button and if so, where it is.
CPU
Throttling
The
Intel Mobile Pentium® laptops also sport a feature known
as CPU Throttling (and named SpeedStep™ by Intel),
that actually slows down your processor when you’re
running on the battery. When you’re plugged into your
AC, your processor runs full speed ahead. But when you unplug
that cord, it shifts into a lower gear. A processor running
at a lower speed and using less voltage saves your battery
even that much more juice.
So
now you have a number of tools to implement in order to save
your computer’s precious battery power. But maybe instead
on that next long distance flight, you might want to think
ahead and book a seat with a power outlet. ?
by
Kara Glover
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