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206 Responses to 'Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life'

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1. wong said,
   
   

   on July 1st, 2007 at 9:36 pm

   But most battery has their own life-cycle, which limited their recharged times :P Anyway, I did those you stated when I first get my laptop ;)

2. Jamie said,
   
   

   on July 1st, 2007 at 9:57 pm

   Thanks for that! Didn’t know that I had to exercise my battery. Mine typically goes unused for a month at least! Uh oh.

3. didi said,
   
   

   on July 2nd, 2007 at 12:39 am

   If u didnt travel, just use at house, then is better to take the battery out and use AC instead. But have to be caution of lighting strike or voltage spike… If possible get another surge protector when u want to use AC power…

4. Thai said,
   
   

   on July 4th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

   OK, the tips are really useful! Thanks for them! Hope my battery will last longer from now on..

5. syahid ali said,
   
   

   on July 5th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

   and don’t stay too long with your pc. shut down your pc and take a nap. make your LIFE longer. :D

6. davidlian said,
   
   

   on July 5th, 2007 at 11:53 pm

   I’ve just got one more tip to share - Don’t play games on your laptop, especially not World of Warcraft.

   Load The Burning Crusade on your laptop and take it for a swing at Starbucks, and you’d end up with a burnt battery.

7. engtech @ internet duct tape said,
   
   

   on July 7th, 2007 at 5:06 am

   I’ve got a particularly bad battery on my laptop. It constantly overheats… might be an issue with the fans not running sometimes.

   My laptop is a lemon, not an apple.

8. Extend Laptop Battery Life at Wired For Gadgets said,
   
   

   on July 8th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

   [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life [Friedbeef Tech] [...]

9. Watch TV Online said,
   
   

   on July 8th, 2007 at 10:00 pm

   Also try removing usb devices if plugged in they suck up energy even when not in use (those shiny lights take electricity which gets sucked from your laptops battery).

10. Dan said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 10:12 pm

    Authoritative information here folks - DO NOT leave lithium-polymer batteries discharged for long periods! I work for a major laptop manufacturer, leave your battery halfway charged, or fully if you don’t have time to figure out halfway. Independently verify this folks, it’s very important - read your manual - Roomba, laptop, iPod, etc. - what ever it is using lithium-polymer. You’ll see clearly NOT to leave the battery discharged if you’re not using it for a while. Doing so can cause a complete failure of the battery, or shorten its charge capacity.

    Admin Note - Thanks for the tip : Have edited the post

11. Fran Taylor said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 10:38 pm

    If you have a decent file system on your hard drive, you don’t need to defragment it. So if you really want to save power, Windows is out. If you use Linux and PowerTop, you can see exactly where the power is being consumed. My battery lasts twice as long under Linux as it does under Windows.

12. none said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 10:43 pm

    If you don’t believe the guy from the laptop company, take a read at http://www.batteryuniversity.com

    the “drain the battery” days are long gone, if they ever existed. Modern LiON batteries have no memory effect and should be stored at 1/2 charge for best results, fully charged is acceptable, stored drained = ruined battery. They also lose maxumum capacity whether you use them or not, so don’t worry much about charge cycles.

    The battery tips here are pretty much 100% wrong, and will cause maximum damage. Sorry guy.

    Admin Note - Thanks for the tip : Have edited the post

13. Dickbain said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

    Great tips! Not sure about the stand-by vs hibernation. I’ve left my laptop [IBM T60] on standby for 2 weeks and when I fired it up, I had 98% battery remaining. Hibernation has always been flaky at best. I’ve lost more work due to hibernation over the year than I care to remember…I say, Standby is the way to go!

14. Antony Jones said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    Yep - number 8 is wrong though. Like laptop guy said, 40% charge is ideal for dormant batteries. Forget about standby too. Just unplug it!

    Admin Note - Thanks for the tip : Have edited the post

15. velkr0.org said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    [...] read more | digg story Leave a comment Please note that comment moderation is in use, so there may be a short delay before your comment appears. Also, here’s the trackback URL. [...]

16. Lil_jimmy said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    I have a few problems with a couple of these. #1, your hard drive is always spinning when the computer is on. The read/write heads are what moves with activity. The only thing you can do to keep your HD from spinning as much is to turn the computer off.

    #5, more RAM takes more energy to run. It’s not always more efficent to add more. If your computer isn’t using the page file much as it is, then it would probably be a waste (as far as efficency goes) to add more RAM. Ram uses about 15W of power per GB.

17. jambarama said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:22 pm

    If you are using Linux, most of the options still apply. On nice feature, if you’re using KDE, is a system tray program called “Klaptop.” This lets you “throttle” down your CPU manually, so if you know you will be doing light stuff, no need to fire up all 2+ ghz of your CPU to open Firefox. Throttle it down to 50%, your computer won’t be as snappy, but the battery will last a lot longer.

18. Nixz News Ep12 : โย่ว วันนี้ข่าวน้อยจิงๆนะ said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    [...] 15 วิธีที่จะทำให้ Battery Laptop คุณอยู่นานขึ้… [...]

19. Andrew Pollack said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    Lil_jimmy is wrong, but so are some tips here.

    Lil_jimmy — hard disks can be set with power options to spin down when not accessed for “x” minutes. This really does spin them down. All the way down. Just like off. Of course, if you’re multitasking, using auto-save, or low on ram you’re hitting the drive so often it never gets a chance to reach that period — but if you’re watching a dvd or if you’re reading a long document this will help.

    Also, Lil_jimmy — while it takes more energy to keep more ram energized, it’s also true that most users don’t have enough and thus are using their hard disk for the difference via the swapping file. This is really hard on the disk, very slow for the PC, and a serious power drain.

    You can combine these things and get fancy — add a flash card reader, and set your auto-save and temp directories to that. There are now even IDE interface smart card readers that seem like a hard disk for your PC but they’re still expensive and geek-only.

    As far as the article –

    Turning off auto-save when you’re working on battery is idiotic. That’s when you need it most. It’s all well and good to save a little power with it off, until you bump the machine, pour coffee in it, or run out of power anyway and loose that two hours of work. “Its all good fun until someone loses and eye.”

    More:

    Some batteries should NOT be left discharged for long periods, as they can fail (sometimes catastrophically). Others require deep recycle maintenance. To care for your battery, read the friendly manual that came with it and find out what is best. Batteries — more than any other component — vary drastically from type to type in their chemical makeup and thus their care.

    As far as defragmenting the hard disk - this has different benefits today than it used to. The act of moving files around that in the past never changed and thus each sector never moved causes the sectors to be re-writen. In machines that have a long life span, this is valuable because you can have some sectors sit untouched for so long the magnetic charge weakens over time. Modern operating systems use file storage techniques (formats) that are less prone to performance problems from fragmented files, but it does still drain the drive and take a bit longer.

    MOST modern defrag utilities are smart enough to NOT activate when you’re on battery power, so they themselves aren’t causing drive activity and draining power.

    FINALLY — the article missed two really essential ways to save a LOT of power.

    1. SHUT OFF the WIFI if you don’t need it. Usually, there is a switch, but sometimes you have to do it in the WIFI config. Turn off that radio (which you should be doing on airplanes anyway). That WIFI radio transmitter uses a good bit of power. It uses even more when you’re NOT connected since it’s “seeking” your home connection and often ramps up the power to try to find it. Think of how fast your cell phone drains when you have poor coverage.

    2. Lower the graphics use. You can do this be changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks.

    Hope this helps.

    –Andrew

    Generally speaking - read the booklet that came with your laptop!
    
    Admin Note - Thanks for the tip : Have edited the post for the auto save and your 2nd tip. Your 1st tip was already in the original post

20. LongJohn said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    try the blue pill ;-) just kidding …

21. opticron said,
    
    

    on July 8th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    Again, if you are running linux, the very latest kernel has a feature called “tickless”. This means that if nothing is requesting regular interrupts for a timer or something similar, the kernel will put the cpu in sleep mode for extended periods of time (such as while you’re reading this page) and it will consume MUCH less battery power.

22. James Yeang said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 12:40 am

    Thanks for some of the pointers guys, the post has been amended in several places.

23. James Yeang said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 12:47 am

    Dickbain: On my laptop… Standby lasts me a matter of hours, hibernate - as long as I have ever wanted. Are you sure your laptop did not shut off after being on standby for so long?

24. easan said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 1:05 am

    Anyone notice that #8 and #15 contradict. One says never fully discharge battery. The other says fully discharge it every two weeks.

    Admin Note - These are referring to different battery types Li-On batts vs older ones with memory effects.

25. jesse said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 1:33 am

    buy a lenovo with a 9 cell battery. that’s how you extend your laptop’s battery life…these things run forever.

26. lil_jimmy said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 2:14 am

    Andrew Pollack ~ No I am not wrong, you missed my point entirely.

    My point was the writer said that defragging will reduce the spin of your disks. That is incorrect, it only reduces the movement of your read/write heads. The only way to reduce the spinning is to turn the HD off (through power managment as you said), but defragging has nothing to do with that.

    My second point was that adding more RAM isn’t ALWAYS the best option. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Depends on how much RAM you already have.

    I think you need to work on your reading comprehension skills before you go spouting off about how wrong people are.

    Admin Note: I have changed the wording so it refers to how fast the drive works rather than how much it spins. Thanks for pointing that out.

27. meneame.net said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 2:42 am

    Quince consejos para aumentar la vida de la batería de tu portátil

    Pues eso, 15 consejos para que tu portátil te dure más tiempo y con más calidad.

28. Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life | The Best Article Every day said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 2:43 am

    [...] Written by Friedbeef [...]

29. 17 formas de extender la vida de la batería de tu laptop said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 3:24 am

    [...] este artículo que encontré en el blog de FriedBeef’s Tech, y que me pareció interesante, pues tiene algunos puntos que pasamos por alto y que nos ayudarán [...]

30. Technology Bytes » 15 Ways To Extend Laptop Battery Life said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 4:14 am

    [...] recently had a call where the caller asked about laptop battery life. Here’s an article I found on Digg about ways to extend your battery life. Lots of good advice including, defrag [...]

31. Ben said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 6:00 am

    Why does everyone seem to think that OS X is totally self defragging?! It is but only to a point! It will automatically defrag the system files ONLY. It does not defrag your applications, documents, or anything other then the core OS. Defragmenting using a program like Drive Genius will still show a benefit. Please stop the spread of this very common misconception.

    Admin Note: Official documentation from Apple suggests that there is little benefit from defragging OSX. See Link below
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

32. Jay said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:19 am

    even though adding more memory may or may not improve battery life, you still have to think that the stock ram on most laptops are lacking around 30mb of memory from their stated capaciy, so replacing it can help (ie. instead of 996 of 1024 or 448 from 512, from the laptop company, a new one with the exact number can improve performance slightly without a power usage increase.)

33. Ben said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:46 am

    Sure the Apple documentation says otherwise. Just as what the Apple employees that develop the OS will tell those that work with them otherwise also. ;-)

34. James Yeang said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:48 am

    @Ben: It’s not that they just claim to handle fragmentation better, Apple actually discourages defrags for OSX.

35. Fimmtán leiðir til að spara rafhlöðuna » Potturinn.com » Potturinn said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:57 am

    [...] leiðir til að spara rafhlöðuna Áhugaverð grein um hvernig er hægt að láta rafhlöðuna endast lengur á fartölvunni. Eitthvað sem [...]

36. Ben said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:58 am

    @James, yes they also discourage replacing the iPod battery. I’ve been told by several OS X developers that work for Apple that defragmentation can be beneficial to a point and is not detrimental to the state of the OS. It’s not always needed but can be helpful in some situations.

37. fb said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 9:11 am

    And if you use a bigger bsttery, then you also have more time:

    http://zonow.com/55

38. WAYS TO EXTEND YOUR LAPTOP'S BATTERY LIFE – PinoyPress — Philippines news, breaking news, features, reports, commentary, opinion, blogs. said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    [...] Friedbeef’s Tech has listed several ways — 15, in fact — to extend the battery life of your laptop. One of the tips: Exercise the battery. “Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharging is only for older batteries with memory effects.)” [...]

39. Bios said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am

    This is a pretty rudimentary lists of things to keep your laptop battery in check, thanks for sharing this though.

40. Tech tips fixes and whitepapers said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 9:58 am

    Extend your laptop battery life

    Well this is not a true desktop computer tip but is one of those great lists that we always like to read. By the way if the link does not open for you then hold down your ctrl key (you…

41. pligg.com said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

    Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.

42. 15 个方法延长你本本电池的使用时间 - 花儿开了 said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    [...] 凡是用本本的人恐怕都经历过到处找电源的尴尬，其实养成一些好习惯可以很有效的延长本本电池的使用时间。今天在网上看到一篇不错的文章，翻译一下同广大本本一族分享。原文地址：在这里。 [...]

43. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life | apageor2.com blogspherism said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    [...] read more | digg story Powered by Gregarious (39) [...]

44. Geert said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    Li-Ion cells should not be completely drained. This part is true. HOWEVER, a Li-ion battery (one or more cells packaged together) has a chip to prevent this from happening. So it is not possible to damage a Li-Ion (or Li-polymer) battery by completely draining it.

    The problem is that this little chip only knows what ‘Full’ and ‘empty’ is by calibration. Once it nears empty, the voltage drops considerably. Similarly, once it nears a full charge, the voltage rises sharply.

    Running a Li-ion battery empty and subsequently give it a full charge is a GOOD thing because this will re-calibrate the chip to the full charge range. Doing so once every two months will keep a Li-ion battery fit.

45. Best of Feeds - 24 links - design, tips, facebook, blogging, games « //engtech - internet duct tape said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    [...] [LAPTOP] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life (friedbeef.com, 152 saves, 28 inbound links, 1872 diggs) [...]

46. MaNiAc said,
    
    

    on July 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm

    Jay said,
    on July 9th, 2007 at 7:19 am
    “even though adding more memory may or may not improve battery life, you still have to think that the stock ram on most laptops are lacking around 30mb of memory from their stated capaciy, so replacing it can help (ie. instead of 996 of 1024 or 448 from 512, from the laptop company, a new one with the exact number can improve performance slightly without a power usage increase.)”

    LOL!!! this made me laugh…those mb that are missing are beeing used by your graphic card… if you change the stock ram to another one you’ll still end up with 32mb (or more) less

47. Business Hacks » Extend Your Notebook’s Battery Life on BNET said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 3:01 am

    [...] you’re not squeezing every ounce of power out of it. Tech blog Friedbeef’s Tech offers 15 ways to extend your notebook’s battery life. A couple of my [...]

48. davper said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 5:19 am

    The best way is to get a laptop that uses a secondary battery. My HP allows me to attach a 6 hour battery to my laptop giving me 8 hours of run time on my 17″ wide screen.

49. 15个方法帮你延长笔记本电池的使用 at 随E空间 said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 5:24 am

    [...] 翻译自： Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life [...]

50. Brett Terpstra said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 6:16 am

    Re: Defragging OS X.

    It helps. I do a lot of video/audio editing and move large files frequently. I run the Tech Tool suite and DiskWarrior and get noticeable performance gains when my drive and btree structure are not a mess. Apple can say what they like, but the drives do fragment. I’ve noticed on some of my other work macs that don’t handle video that the drives are rarely in need of defragging, so there is SOME truth to the statement that it’s not required. I don’t, however, believe anyone who says that it’s detrimental.

51. K said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 8:05 am

    I don’t agree that having background apps running is necessarily a big drain on power. It is if those apps are busy doing something — crunching numbers, downloading files, etc. — but not if they are idle, like a spreadsheet; they just take up space in memory. Maybe you cause it to swap out if you use a lot of other things, but that’s reduced if you follow tip #5.

    I’m not keen on telling people to turn off autosave, either. It could be a big help in the case when you didn’t get to manually save before the machine suddenly goes into hibernate or standby because the battery got low.

52. James Yeang said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 8:19 am

    @K: It all adds up, I don’t expect everyone to implement everything on this list, parts of it, esp. since tip #5 involves spending money.

    As for turning off autosave, see my cautionary note ” If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.”

53. Brombomb said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    #9 is great, unless you plan on moving your laptop. AFAIK when you hibernate your disk state is saved, but the Hard disk drive heads are not moved away from the cylinders. This means if you quickly move your laptop, you run the risk of scratching you Hard Disk Drive permanently destroying its capabilities

54. Andrew Pollack said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    Brombomb — bzzzt. That’s not the case. The drive heads are parked during hybernate. Hybernate is just exactly the same as OFF. It is OFF. The only difference is that the operating system saves the contents of the RAM memory into a file on the disk drive, and knows how to reload that back into ram and kick start the system again the next time it boots.

    Off is off. Heads are parked. You can remove the battery and the power cord in hibernate and not loose anything. Off. Really. Its off.

    Hell, some good drives will even park the heads really fast if they feel an inertia change that might be a fall, so that by the time the PC hits the floor the heads are parked on the drive EVEN WHEN ITS RUNNING.

    Off is off.

55. 15 ways to improve your laptop’s battery life said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:05 am

    [...] recently found a nice article written on the Friedbeef’s Tech blog which gives 15 tips on how to get the best longevity out of your laptop’s battery. Here [...]

56. 煎蛋 » 15个方法帮你延长笔记本电池寿命 said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:46 am

    [...] #有必要挖，又不是在创造世界记录… 链接 | 来源 Tag: [...]

57. Mindflayer said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:56 am

    Don’t turn down the resolution. Use your LCD’s native resolution, otherwise the GPU and CPU interpolate.

58. Urls Sinistras » Blog Archive » del.icio.us entre 03/07/2007 e 09/07/2007 said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery LifeLaptops tend to lose their charm quickly when youâ��re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so. [...]

59. Andrew Pollack said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 11:12 am

    Uris — interpolation is happening, but neither in the CPU or in the GPU. It happens in the monitor’s chipset (which can be done in a variety of ways).

    The only exception to this would be if you’re playing some higher end games — in which case saving battery power isn’t your issue.

    The GPU and CPU generally don’t know what kind of monitor you have connected.

    Ok, true, sometimes you can have a monitor driver installed that could in theory offload this task to the gpu, but its pretty unusual for that to happen.

    Still — you’re right in one respect, the resolution isn’t going to have as big an impact as the use of the graphics accelerator options and fancy appearance options.

60. 15 Ways to Extend Laptop Battery Life | Small Laptops and Notebooks said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 1:11 pm

    [...] Over at Friedbeef’s Tech, they’ve posted a very interesting article, 15 ways to extend your laptop’s battery life. [...]

61. Yasser Has Things To Say » Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop's Battery Life. said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    [...] really sure what else could affect my battery life. And I just found this article on ways to extend the battery life for laptops. It mentions some cool things that I didn’t know, others that I already know. Here is the [...]

62. Estrafalarius — 15 formas de extender la vida de la batería de tu laptop said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    [...] Top 15 ways to improve your laptop battery life En: Computadoras, Curiosidades, Tecnología — Julio 10, [...]

63. Martin Butt said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    If it is convenient to use a mains adaptor, use it instead of the battery. Also remove the battery when running off of mains.

64. Mathew7 said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    Defragmenting is most beneficial on FAT drives (FAT32/FAT16).
    The idea is that one file is split over lots of pieces of identical size (clusters in DOS/Windows world), which is common to all filesystems. But there is some information regarding the continuation of the pieces. FAT32 uses a straight table at the beginning in which for cluster i, fat[i] tells you the next piece location (next i). So if you are badly fragmented, it will alter reading fat and file data, thus moving the HDD heads between front and middle/back sectors. I don’t know on NTFS how this is improved, but for linux ext2fs that “next piece” information is MUCH closer to a file’s data. There is only one big table related to free space, but it does not hurt performance so much if you don’t write constantly new pieces (e.g. video procesing). And I think OSX uses a modification of ext2fs (never had any Macs so I don’t know).

65. Fábio Pedrosa » Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    [...] recently found on Lifehacker a nice article from the Friedbeef’s blog, about 15 ways to extend the laptop battery life. Here are a few of those I think are the most [...]

66. bob said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    For windows get Speedswitch - http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html

    You can more finely utilize Windows support of Intel’s Speedstep technology. This enables the system to dynamically adjust processor speed to accomodate your current workload. The architecture is built in to XP, SpeedSwitch merely enables you to fine-tune it.

    It has 3 basic levels of performance-Max Performance which keep sthe processor running at 100%), Max Battery (which aggressively throttles down EVERYTHING-makes my battery last forever), and Dynamic Switching, which will adjust processor speed according to workload.

67. Tyler said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:00 pm

    is it better to have your laptop plugged in while using it when possible, or is it better to charge and then run down the battery a ways then recharge?

68. 15 ways to boost your notebook battery life » The PC Doctor’s blog said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:41 pm

    [...] Lifehacker  I came across an interesting link detailing 15 ways to improve your notebook’s battery life .  Some of the tips (such as defrag regularly) aren’t likely to give you more than a few [...]

69. Tips for Extending Laptop Battery Life said,
    
    

    on July 10th, 2007 at 10:52 pm

    [...] can’t stop a battery from losing it’s capacity, but you can use these 15 tips to extend your laptop battery life in order to get the most out of every charge. The article includes suggestions for cutting out [...]

70. Tic Nervoso » 15 maneiras de aumentar o tempo da sua bateria said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 12:14 am

    [...] Fonte: friedbeef [...]

71. jos said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 2:35 am

    good advise… the defrag doesnt really apply to macs… but all of the others can… i hate dimming my screen but it really does increase battery life :)

72. Ben said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 3:27 am

    Re: Mac OS X Defraging….

    Hot file clustering works by ensuring that newly created and hotfiles are contained within the largest contiguous freespace. It is a very effective system but it is hindered when you have no large contiguous freespace areas. Software programs like Drive Genius cooperate with this exceptional technology by ensuring and/or creating the maximum possible contiguous free space. So yes, is beneficial to defrag in OS X.

73. links for 2007-07-10 « Commonplace Book said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 4:08 am

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74. links for 2007-07-09 « linksnstuff said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 4:23 am

    [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life (tags: mac tips) [...]

75. geekMethod.com - Weekly tech, internet, computer and social geek podcast » Blog Archive » Podcast 37 - Santa, can you please put some freaking pants on said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 6:30 am

    [...] 15 ways to extend your laptop battery life [...]

76. 15 Ways To Increase Battery Life = Life Saver » MoGo Mobility Blog said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 7:57 am

    [...] days could be over!  I just found a sweet article over at Lifehacker via FriedBeef.com that has 15 tips on how to suck the most juice out of those little battery bricks.   For brevity sake, since [...]

77. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life « Kamesh contemplates said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    [...] 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life Found this link with nice tips to extend laptops battery life, check it out at [...]

78. Fran Taylor said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    Lil_jimmy:

    Where do you get your data about 1 Gb of RAM using 15 watts?

    This computer has 1 Gb of RAM and the entire computer only uses 15.5 watts:

    http://www.linuxpowertop.org/results.php

    My RAM upgrade is showing up tomorrow from NewEgg, I will use my power meter before and after the upgrade and post the results.

79. La Lista de Listas que estabas buscando - Carrero Bitácora de los Hermanos Carrero, David Carrero Fernández-Baillo y Jaime Carrero Fernández-Baillo. said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life. vía: del.icio.us (Actualización 11-07-2007) [...]

80. Fran Taylor said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    Mathew7:

    The OSX file system is called HFS+. It’s a newer version of the HFS file system that Macs have had since the Mac Plus in 1985. It was designed to work as quickly as possible given the 800K floppy disks that they had to work with. Even by today’s standards, it’s a pretty good design.

81. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life « Computer newsletter and security information said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    [...] read more | digg story [...]

82. » Extending your laptop’s battery life | IT News Digest | TechRepublic.com said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    [...] Well no longer, you can check out this piece here on how to keep the battery lifespan of your laptop going strong in Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life. [...]

83. 15 formas de alargar la vida de tus baterías - Carrero Bitácora de los Hermanos Carrero, David Carrero Fernández-Baillo y Jaime Carrero Fernández-Baillo. said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    [...] Gracias a ConexionesRazonables por la traducción al castellano del original en inglés. [...]

84. Al said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    Throttling the CPU down (AKA under-clocking) is very important. On windows, the best way I’ve found for doing this is a nifty utility called Notebook Hardware Control. Ubuntu repositories also have a few (although the names escape me at the moment…)

85. Apartment Therapy Home Tech said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

    15 Ways to Increase Laptop Battery Life

    15 important tips for maximizing your laptop’s battery’s lifespan include the obvious like, get a more efficient laptop, and the less obvious like hibernate, instead of going into stand-by mode. A couple are Mac specific and a couple are…

86. Web Site Design, Internet Marketing, Ecommerce - ryanj » Blog Archive » links for 2007-07-11 said,
    
    

    on July 11th, 2007 at 10:25 pm

    [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life (tags: Laptop battery tips howto computer productivity) [...]

87. Richard said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 1:28 am

    A very important point is that capacity of modern Li-Ion or Li-Polymer batteries will degrade over time. This happens faster at higher temperatures (exponentially), so it’s important that the battery never gets very warm. It’s said that at 70°C (160°F) a batterys usefull life is reduced to few days. So never!! place the laptop on your pillow or soft bed, where the vents are nearly blocked and the battery will get burning hot against the isolating surface. 70°C will happen easily when sitting in bed with the laptop, if you’re not carefull.
    Also avoid storing the laptop at high temperatures.
    @Geert: The problem with draining Li-Ion/-Poly batteries is not that the undervoltage protection does not work. But the batteries do have som inherent self-drain over time. So if you drain the battery as low as the protection will allow (thats when the laptop/telephone/ipod turns off, and the power button has no effect), and then store it for a few months, the battery will self-drain below the recoverable tresshold, and won’t be able to charge again. A fully charged battery can be left for a long time, before self-drain will affect it seriously.

88. VanillaTree.org » Blog Archive » Love your Laptop Battery said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 2:52 am

    [...] 15 ways to increase the battery life on your laptop. SHOW TO THE WORLD Popularity: 1%none [...]

89. Fran Taylor said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 2:58 am

    Okay, I replaced two 256M SIMMs with two 512M SIMMs, and I am unable to measure any difference in power consumption. The SIMMs are directly beneath the palm rest on the keyboard, and I am unable to detect any difference in temperature, either. So max out that RAM! It’s cheap and you WILL notice the performance difference. Another myth debunked!

90. 18 formas de alargar la vida de tu batería (portátiles) said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 3:41 am

    [...] artículo original http://www.friedbeef.com habla de un total de 17 formas de prolongar la vida de la batería de un portátil, a las cuales me [...]

91. Andrew Pollack said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 4:44 am

    Fran, unless you’re metering between the laptop and the power brick, or better between the battery and the system board, you’re not likely to see a difference.

    The power brick probably tosses off more energy as waste heat than the difference from the additional ram. I’d be surprised if you saw much difference in draw when sitting idle vs. using your hard disk extensively if you’re just looking at the wall socket side for consumption.

92. 18 formas de alargar la vida de tu batería (portátiles) said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 5:59 am

    [...] de la vida útil de la batería, situación que puede evitarse a todas luces. El artículo original http://www.friedbeef.com habla de un total de 17 formas de prolongar la vida de la batería de un portátil, a las cuales me [...]

93. 15 ways to increase your Laptop battery life - 00de Forum said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 6:18 am

    [...] work unplugged, following a few of these tips could help improve your battery life significantly. link I am what i am, much more than a God, much less than a [...]

94. Fran Taylor said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 8:44 am

    Andrew,

    You only reinforce my point. Power consumption is not magic. As far as the power cord is concerned, your computer is just a big resistor. Electricity goes in and heat comes out. If you can’t measure it, it isn’t there, and it’s not going to affect the power budget. RAM is really only burning power when it’s being accessed. So the amount of RAM is not going to change the power usage significantly, except to make it go down because it’s replacing disk accesses. “Too much RAM” is never a problem. Modern OS’s (even Windows!) will appropriate unused RAM and cache disk contents on it. If you have a LOT of RAM (relative to what you are directly using), eventually all the disk that you ever touch will be loaded into RAM and the computer will not touch the disk at all, except to flush dirty buffers, or if you explicitly sync. This is good on servers because it makes them faster, it’s good on laptops because they use less power. The only danger is losing your work in a crash if your data isn’t flushed to disk. Choosing your OS and applications carefully is the best way to avoid crashes.

    The two most productive (and most difficult to achieve in practice) ways to save power are: power down the disk because you aren’t using it, and, get the processor to execute fewer cycles by slowing the clock and/or using its sleep modes. All modern computer hardware is CMOS based, and we all learned in electronics class that CMOS transistors use almost no power in their quiescent state, it’s only the act of switching that causes current to flow.

    So buy more RAM! Lots of it! If you haven’t maxed out your RAM, you are wasting power.

95. Richard said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    Fran Taylor that is not really correct. The main RAM in our computers is DRAM, which stands for Dynamic RAM.
    Dynamic RAM is the most compact RAM type, as there is no capacitor in each memory cell (it works because of the small parasitic capacitance of the CMOS transistors themself). Because of this, DRAM is very dense, leading to large memories. However the missing capacitors mean that DRAM can only hold information for a very short time - few microseconds. This is solved by constantly refreshing (reading and writing back) the entire memory. The circuit to do this is insignificant in size compared to the size gain of using capacitor-less memory-cells. Becaus of this DRAM actually uses power constantly. It also makes the memory a bit slower and less deterministic, as a read access may coincide with a refresh.
    Contrast this to Static RAM which is used for cache and as use memory cells which can keep a charge without being refreshed (they contain a full flip-flop in every cell). This is why cache memory is never very large, and still takes up quite a lot of room. On the other hand, cache memory only uses power on access.
    I’m not saying that more memory might save power because of reduced hard disk use - it might.
    Buying a new hard-disk will also help, they are really getting a low better too. I just changed a 40GB Hitachi HDD to a 80GB Hitachi HDD, and the nominal power printed on the drives was 5W and 3W respectively (5V 1A, and 5V 600mA). Thats quite impressive considering it’s only a year or two newer tech, and it got bigger at the same time.

96. tech.twomadgeeks.com » Blog Archive » Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life said,
    
    

    on July 12th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    [...] Link: Fried Beef [...]

97. asdf said,
    
    

    on July 13th, 2007 at 5:17 am

    @ Fran Taylor,

    You’re somewhat wrong about never having too much ram. 32 bit windows doesn’t have the capability of addressing more than 3gb of ram, and even to access the full 3 gb it needs a change in the startup files. putting 4gb of ram in a XP box is a complete waste of 1gb of ram, the operating system simply doesn’t have enough memory addresses to use the ram. of course, 4gb of ram would be a bit rare on a laptop, but i’m sure there’s someone out there wasting it.

98. Blog Modelo Light » Podcast #4 said,
    
    

    on July 13th, 2007 at 6:02 am

    [...] Cómo cuidar tus baterías (en Inglés) [...]

99. » Trucos para alargar la vida de la bateria del portatil » elVirtual.es noticias sobre derechos, sistemas de trueque, consumo responsable, sostenibilidad y formas de ahorrar said,
    
    

    on July 13th, 2007 at 6:19 am

    [...] friedbeef’s Tech. Si encontraste interesante lo que leíste, puedes subscribirte al blog con un lector de [...]

100. Fran Taylor said,
     
     

     on July 13th, 2007 at 6:29 am

     Richard, of course you are right about DRAM. But only the memory cells themselves need to be refreshed, the muxes and buffers on the chips (not insignificant) are standard CMOS and all that I said applies to them. Given that the SIMMs are cool to the touch when the computer is idle, the energy needed to refresh is pretty minimal. As with your drive, technology marches on, and 512 Mb SIMMs seem to use the same power as 256 Mb SIMMs.

     asdf, there is a whole world of Operating Systems and processors out there besides Windows and 32-bit Intel. I have a Windows machine too, but I only use it when I have to, and I wash carefully afterward.

     If your laptop even takes 4 Gb of RAM, you’re probably one of those folks who gets a new car every two years. I have a $300 Compaq that I bought at a flea market. It’s in utterly perfect condition, the battery is good for two DVD movies, it runs Google Earth surprisingly well, and Fedora 7 runs like a champ on it.

101. /home/zero said,
     
     

     on July 13th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

     Längere Akku-Laufzeit für euer Notebook

     …

102. rules said,
     
     

     on July 15th, 2007 at 4:03 am

     Is it a good practice to remove the battery and plug your laptop to the power source directly whenever available? Will this save battery life?

103. Mircea said,
     
     

     on July 17th, 2007 at 12:07 am

     Real story, my own story. Had my first laptop a few years ago, ruined the battery in the first year. Sold it (the laptop) got a new one. From the very beggining, I stored the battery 40% charged, when at home, on AC power. Every month I do on the battery a full cycle: discharge it to 5%, recharge it to 100%, discharge it back to 40%. The result? It’s been three and a half years since I have this laptop and my battery still last for 3 hours and a half. When new, it would last 5 hours. So judge for yourself.

104. Dale said,
     
     

     on July 20th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

     This may not help your battery’s run time in the short term, but will help extend it’s life expectancy. When not using the battery, drain it to 40%. Then, put it in a ziplock bag, and put it in the fridge (never the freezer.) The cold tempurates inhibits the chemical reactions that are constantly taking place in the battery, and thus slows down the battery’s rate of decay.

105. Leif Dalands blogg - IT & Produktivitet » Del.icio.us: Ukens anbefalte lenker said,
     
     

     on July 21st, 2007 at 8:16 pm

     [...] Batterikapasitet: Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop?s Battery Life - En 15 punkters liste over hva du kan gjøre for å forlenge batterikapasiteten på din bærebare maskin. Her finner du både og. Noen tips er åpenbare mens andre faktisk er opplysende. Sammenlagt blir dette verd å få med seg. [...]

106. Steve said,
     
     

     on July 23rd, 2007 at 4:16 am

     Convert your AMD64 3000 “desktop replacement” to AC.
     Install power supply inside with extra fan-safely!. Eternal battery for the rare occasions you need it.

107. links for 2007-07-23 « Where Is All This Leading To? said,
     
     

     on July 23rd, 2007 at 8:22 am

     [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life (tags: laptop battery tips computer howto hardware productivity energy) [...]

108. Elwyn Jenkins said,
     
     

     on July 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm

     Top list of things to do. This is as comprehensive a list that I have ever seen on this topic. Thanks.

109. nis said,
     
     

     on July 24th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

     looks like there are many experts in here on laptop battery. I came across this site and saw a whopping 8hrs of battery life that a backup battery gives at http://xpalpower.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!C8558CDA43129A3B!184/

     please share comments and advise on this product…

110. Laptopunuzun pil ömrünü uzatmak için 17 ipucu « XSP-Groupâ„¢ said,
     
     

     on July 27th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

     [...] Original [...]

111. irone said,
     
     

     on July 28th, 2007 at 10:12 am

     I wanted to increase my battery life. I found (and purchased) an accessory at: http://www.batmax.com just to see how it works. And I had a good surprise. I got around 50% more battery life with my Apple MPB after a week and half.

112. PeltierJuntcion said,
     
     

     on July 28th, 2007 at 1:42 pm

     FAT is definitely much worse than NTFS when it comes to fragmentation. But NTFS does not entirely escape the performance hit due to fragmentation either. You still need to defrag regularly to maintain optimum performance, especially on the slow drives found in most notebooks. I have a Lenovo 3000 series N100 with a 100GB HDD, and I was using the built in windows XP defragmenter until about a week ago. My laptop is my primary work and entertainment machine, so it sees heavy use day in and day out. To keep things running smooth, I would defrag every weekend, but it took quite a bit of time, and didnt defrag some files either. Since last week, I have been using the trial version of Diskeeper 2007 Professional, and it is in a different league altogether. I dont have to wait for weekends to defrag anymore - the automatic defrag of Diskeeper defrags the drive whenever the machine is idle without leeching system resources. Fantastic software. I plan to get the full version once my trial period is up.

     Selecting a battery is a tradeoff between usage time and weight. I am going in for a Dell XPS 1330 (if they ship the damn things on time!!!) and as I look through the reviews, I find that the 9 cell battery extends usage time ( d’uh) but with a great hit in weight which rises to more than 2 kg. Opt for the bigger battery and heavier load, or go with low weight, hoping that there are convenient socket points available when required? Decisions, decisions! :(

113. Joshua Madaki said,
     
     

     on July 28th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

     These tips are good for me. Thanks so much for this site.

     But I have a problem with my laptop, I on it one day and the lapstop has stoped coming up since that day , is it battary problem, the laptop is Hp. Any useful information can be sent to my mail. Thanks

114. Intel® Software Network Blogs » Blog Archive » Changing perspective on extending battery life said,
     
     

     on July 30th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

     [...] advice on extending battery life? Via jkOnTheRun I learned about Friedbeef’s tips on extending battery life (for laptops, UMPC and other devices). I think a change of perspective needs to take [...]

115. AHyKA said,
     
     

     on July 31st, 2007 at 11:05 am

     thanks a lot for the useful tips. got linked o here frpm Yaho. just as I expected it was really good and has taught me a lot…

116. Dr. QUOC BINH said,
     
     

     on July 31st, 2007 at 12:19 pm

     The tips are very helpful. thank you.
     Please let me know how to charge a battery to have long life bettery but it does not problem with my laptop

117. N. newton said,
     
     

     on August 1st, 2007 at 1:48 am

     I know keeping your laptop cool is one of the tips.. I looked on newegg.com, and they have these fan/cooler type mounts.. that you put ur laptop on and helps keep it cool. Only 16.00 bucks do you feel this a worth while item? My laptop is running fine its about 2 months old but im tryin to keep ina good condition for as long as I can.. Thanks

118. James Yeang said,
     
     

     on August 1st, 2007 at 6:29 am

     Thanks guys for all the good feedback… for all those who shared their own experience and gave some tips - much appreciated!

     For those who asked questions:

     @N. newton: I think it’s good but bulky. Don’t know if battery life and performance is worth the cash and bulk unless your machine is prone to overheating.

     @Dr.Quoc Binh: Not sure what your question is? The post kinda says it all

     @Joshua Madaki: Try HP support. They would be the best option.

119. N. newton said,
     
     

     on August 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am

     Thanks for the tip, but arent laptops known to overheat? I havea Dell Inspirion E1505 15.4 inch screen

120. Andrew Pollack said,
     
     

     on August 1st, 2007 at 8:19 am

     I’m testing a new freeware util that seems to really help. I won’t know for a few days how well it really helps but initially it seems good.

     CPU Mag recommended it. Its called “speedswitch XP” and its free. I’m trying it out. It claims to be a much more aggressive and active “speedstep” like program that throttles down the CPU when it is not being taxed. Intel’s “Speedstep” is what comes with most pc’s for this, but this one seems to be more aggressive and automatically uses different profiles if you’re on battery vs. mains power.

     It has a bunch of options and looks good. We’ll see if it helps.

121. James Yeang said,
     
     

     on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:14 am

     @ N. Newton - not really. Those which consume less power generally produce less heat. Check out: http://www.superwarehouse.com/intel_centrino_laptops_explained.cfm

     @Andrew Pollack: Awesome! Do let us know results from it

122. martin888 said,
     
     

     on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 pm

     i have another trick to prolong the life of my battery by 30 to 40 percent longer… i put it in the freezer overnight or when it is not being used.

123. Anthony LoTempio said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 12:01 am

     My wife uses her laptop pluged in at home,with battery in, so far no problems, The laptop and battery are13 months old, are we doing the right thing, or should I pull out the battery when pluged in?

124. Andrew Pollack said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 12:07 am

     It is my opinion, as someone who’s spent considering time on the subject though not qualified to design batteries, that there some things are more risk than benefit.

     Putting a battery the freezer may help chemically, but risks expansion and contraction of metallic parts and solder points. It also risks condensation on the electronics that are inside any lithium based battery back to control the flow of those high tech batteries.

     Taking a battery our when not in use may help — it definitely will reduce heat exposure — but you risk the damage of moving it around all the time and wearing out the connection points and latches. If its out for long periods of time, be careful of oxidation on the contact points which will reduce efficiency somewhat (though admittedly, I don’t know how much).

125. anonymous said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 12:31 am

     i have a gateway laptop, and i charge my battery at least two times a day. it overheats very fast. is there anything that can help this problem?

126. Abhishek Patel said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 1:23 am

     Really Nice Ways to save my Lep’s power… Thx a looott for offering such steps…in future as well… :)

127. UtterlyBoring.com said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 am

     Geekdom Link Dump

     Some more random links for the geeks (and even for the non geeks) out there:Replacing Task Manager with Process Explorer in Vista (this is a much easier process in XP)Speed…

128. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life | Bad Circuit said,
     
     

     on August 3rd, 2007 at 11:16 pm

     [...] Source by FriedBeef [...]

129. Andrew Pollack said,
     
     

     on August 4th, 2007 at 1:24 am

     Follow-up - results of testing SpeedSwitch-XP

     I like the tool, it has a lot of good information in its displays and seems to help somewhat. Unfortunately, its not a huge advantage for me — maybe 15%. The real problem I have is that this battery is, at nearly two years old, starting to wear out. I take an hour to go from 100% to 60%, and than 15 minutes to finish it off. Some of the cells are clearly in bad shape.

     Here’s a link to the speedswitch tool. If you’re not already using Intel’s Speedstep this will make a HUGE difference.

     It also will make a MUCH bigger difference P4 machines as apposted to Core Duo or Core 2 Duo.

     http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html

130. Laura said,
     
     

     on August 4th, 2007 at 6:28 am

     I have a mac, which tends to run much smoother and has a longer battery life than PC’s. My suggestion: buy a Mac.

131. Andrew Pollack said,
     
     

     on August 4th, 2007 at 6:39 am

     @Laurie — That’s brilliant.

     #1. The only reason Macs tend to run with less crashes is that they don’t support much hardware and drivers for anything but Apple’s own or USB stuff. Windows based machines support every idiot’s poorly made driver and software.

     #2. Apple hardware, today, is virtually the same as PC hardware. The batteries especially run off the same assembly lines.

     #3. The same goes for the outdated belief that Macs are better at video. That was true in the 80’s and early 90’s when the motorola chipset was better at handling those things. Since almost all high end video is now done on its own processor (the GPU) and the GPUs used by Apple and Wintel PC’s are the very same ones this is also no longer the case.

     True, the apple’s look better and many people like them a great deal. I have problem with that — I may be the last one left standing that doesn’t care for OSX (yes, I have two machines that use it) but I don’t claim that to be on a technical basis. I simply am odd enough or set in my ways enough to prefer my windows boxes for desktop use and command line linux for my servers. Ah well.

132. James Yeang said,
     
     

     on August 4th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

     @Andrew Pollack: Thanks for the followup - I’m sure all of us will benefit from your insight!

133. UtterlyBoring.com said,
     
     

     on August 6th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

     Some more random links for

     Some more random links for the geeks (and even for the non geeks) out there:Replacing Task Manager with Process Explorer in Vista (this is a much easier process in XP)Speed…

134. reza aarabi said,
     
     

     on August 8th, 2007 at 3:31 am

     tankes for your top 15 ways to keep my laptops battery.I tel in my English class in iran.

135. memory said,
     
     

     on August 8th, 2007 at 5:21 am

     The SonyVaio laptop battery life is so aggravating, it may last 1 hour and 37 minutes, give or take a few minutes!!..lol It really pisss me off too.

136. nerdybird.org » digg newly popular 1-30days said,
     
     

     on August 9th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

     [...] is growing OpenDNS! Default Password List For Hundreds of Routers, Firewalls, Printer Servers.. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life 90+ Essential Music and Audio Websites Awesome Ubuntu Apps you might not know about [...]

137. RADIOCOOL » 17 bÅ«dų prailginti neÅ¡iojamo kompiuterio akumuliatoriaus darbo laikÄ… said,
     
     

     on August 10th, 2007 at 2:10 am

     [...] Rasta.  PaskelbtiÄ®vertink pirmasis-oji (vertinimų: 0, vidurkis: 0 iÅ¡ 5)  Loading … This entry is filed under Naudingi patarimai. 1 kart. peržiÅ«rÄ—ta You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. PanaÅ¡Å«s įraÅ¡ai I [...]

138. 1001 Lists To Read Before You Die | Terabell - technology, law, programming and a laugh said,
     
     

     on August 11th, 2007 at 3:49 pm

     [...] Top 5 Reasons to succeed and why it sucks to be a Loser 49.   Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life 50.   Top Ten Reasons to Switch to Firefox 51.   Dating Basics: 8 [...]

139. The 1001 list of Quality Reads -- you may want to read before you die said,
     
     

     on August 11th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

     [...] Want but Can’t Have 48.   The Top 5 Reasons to succeed and why it sucks to be a Loser 49.   Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life 50.   Top Ten Reasons to Switch to Firefox 51.   Dating Basics: 8 Surefire Tips to Make it [...]

140. PC Daily Tips » Some Tips To Save Laptop Battery Power said,
     
     

     on August 13th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

     [...] said, here are 15 tips for saving laptop battery power. While some of the tips may seem a bit unrealistic if you are constantly switching between mobile [...]

141. 15 ways to conserve laptop battery power said,
     
     

     on August 13th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

     [...] source: FriedBeef [...]

142. Keith Rider said,
     
     

     on August 14th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

     I bought a ‘new’ battery for my old IBM 600E off Ebay. Put it in and it worked fine. Tried it for about an hour and it still said that there was 80 mins of usage left.
     The first time I really used it I went to a family party and took the laptop to show some wedding photos. After about 90 minutes the battery warning came on, so plugged in the charger. It wouldn’t charge up and it was out of its 30 day warranty.

     If you get a ‘new’ battery, be sure to ‘use’ it so that you can check its going to be OK.

143. By sheer battery-power. « InfornographY said,
     
     

     on August 21st, 2007 at 11:11 pm

     [...] By sheer battery-power. From friedbeef.com [...]

144. Ahmed said,
     
     

     on August 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 am

     tip1: don’t use the labtop while its charging, and olso dont leave the labtop in the charger and use it for long time while the battery is charged, if you want to use the A/C adapter, remove the battery.

145. BESComputers Blog » Blog Archive » 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life said,
     
     

     on August 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 pm

     [...] up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.read more | digg [...]

146. e-laptop-battery said,
     
     

     on August 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 am

     I want to post your article to my website, OK?

147. Raymond said,
     
     

     on September 8th, 2007 at 5:21 am

     I find something helpful in this site too.

     http://www.intelligentbatteries.com/XX_Tips.htm

148. luvmytiki said,
     
     

     on September 10th, 2007 at 2:50 am

     I always leave my battery in when home and AC is plugged in….I have seen several people ask about this - but still no answer?? I have been doing this for nearly a year and battery seems fine…Any thoughts?

149. James Yeang said,
     
     

     on September 10th, 2007 at 7:57 am

     @luvmytiki: While not optimum… I don’t think it’s a huge problem given your convenience.

150. Keystone Blog » Blog Archive » List of the Top 7 “Top 10″ Lists This Week said,
     
     

     on September 12th, 2007 at 2:05 am

     [...] Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop Battery’s Life [...]

151. Sam said,
     
     

     on September 18th, 2007 at 8:41 pm

     Hi,

     Thanks for the useful tips. Will work on these & conserve my laptop’s battery life.

152. WeBuyUBuy.com Blogs » Blog Archive » 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life said,
     
     

     on September 19th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

     [...] read more | digg story addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webuyubuy.com%2Fblogs%2F2007%2F09%2F19%2F15-ways-to-extend-your-laptop%25e2%2580%2599s-battery-life%2F’; addthis_title = ‘15+Ways+to+Extend+Your+Laptop%E2%80%99s+Battery+Life’; addthis_pub = ”; Sphere: Related Content Write a comment [...]

153. e-laptop-battery said,
     
     

     on September 20th, 2007 at 8:50 am

     Good, I will tell to my customer.

154. Saving Laptop Battery Power when on the Move | techxplore.net said,
     
     

     on September 22nd, 2007 at 3:19 pm

     [...] can read more on how to save laptop battery power when on the move from Friedbeef’s Tech and Microsoft at Work. You might not notice it’s importance until you end up into one of [...]

155. Stu said,
     
     

     on September 24th, 2007 at 4:01 pm

     The people I know that never really use the laptop on battery, but always have it plugged in, after three plus years have batteries that work like they were brand new and have run times expected from a new battery. People like me, that use it on battery daily seem to be lucky to get a year out of a battery. It should be noted that I have seen some different refrences made in the above - and people need to watch the difference between lithium-ion and lithium polymer. Li poly from what I know is a really cheap battery, that I’ve only seen in really cheap bottom-of-market products (cell ph, pda, etc…) I’ve never seen one in a laptop. As far as power saving goes, I just got a new laptop with a Intel 965 chipset. I really suggest investing in a flash cache module for $20. (search google) (I got mine on Amazon) HP made waves by speaking against the great Intel when they said that they wouldn’t suggest it as the benefit wasn’t noticible. Unfortunately, what Intel and HP were going at was the amount of time it would take to start up the system, as the Intel driver loads a lot of those files to the flash cache module. What they didn’t make as a highlight (which is what I love most about it) is the BATTERY savings created by loading so much of the OS to a flash chip. Unfortuantely it only works with Vista. Not *nix, not XP. sorry. (I’m hoping for a linux driver soon, Intel’s usually good about those things especially integrated video drivers) But it’s not just the driver, Vista does a lot to make it work. Vista loads sections to the module, works with that module, and the bios uses the module to turn the standard hard drive practically into a hybrid hard drive. Result - my hard drive spins down and STAYS off. A common misnomer is that it is good for your hard drive to spin down. In my experience, it can never stay off for long, and is constantly spinning up and down. This is bad for the drive, not to mention kills the battery totally, cause the drive sucks a large amount of power to spin the platters up. You gotta go from 0 to ~5400RPM (avg) in about a second or so. That takes some power. I really notice with Vista and the 965 chipset there is some really good things going on to save power, and it seems to be working. (I am aware I am risking my neck for saying something positive about vista, but I think it’s true) I also apologize for not being able to provide more in-depth technical information about what’s moved back and forth to the flash cache module, exactly what is stored in it, etc… as I just got it, and it’s new tech, I don’t know the precise details yet. Forgot to mention: Flash cache is a card (mini-pci-express) that goes in one of your three (yes not two, but three now) mini-pci-x internal slots. It’s a 1GB flash card. It’s not designed for you to remove it, so unlike a thumb drive that if it’s not in when the computer boots it can’t load those sections of the OS, this thing is always present and always helps. It’s nice cause it doesn’t stick out or have to be attached like a thumb drive, and I still get to use my SD card slot for actual use, rather than cache. It only works with the Intel 965 chipset (and newer) and only works with Vista.

156. Stu said,
     
     

     on September 24th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

     Sorry I forgot a couple important words..

     …so unlike a thumb drive that if it’s not in when the computer boots it can’t load those sections of the OS, (and has to revert to the hard drive canceling all the power saving and speed saving effects)

     I certainly didn’t mean to insinuate that parts of the OS could not be loaded.

157. 17 formas de extender la vida de la batería de tu laptop said,
     
     

     on October 1st, 2007 at 3:38 am

     [...] este artículo que encontré en el blog de FriedBeef’s Tech, y que me pareció interesante, pues tiene algunos puntos que pasamos por alto y que nos ayudarán [...]

158. 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life « Hardware said,
     
     

     on October 3rd, 2007 at 1:21 am

     [...] read more | digg story [...]

159. Replacement Laptop Battery said,
     
     

     on October 5th, 2007 at 1:45 am

     Very simple. Your battery wi