I'd like ideas on getting the most life out of batterys in my notebook, running Vista home... hibernate mode vs standby, getting rid of start up programs that slow it down etc... Thanks!
Battery Management for Laptop / Notebook
- Thread starter dfergie
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Just a partial answer. I haven't had problems with battery memory since the Lithium batteries replaced NiCads. I leave mine plugged in all the time.
I turn off the hard drive and display after an hour of idle, but I leave the processor running in order to do backup, virus scan and to bring in e-mail.
I have had problems with hibernate and a laptop when I was transporting it between home and the office. It wouldn't properly reconfigure for the new network, and I would have to power it down anyway in order to avoid network errors.
Getting rid of startup programs is a constant fight. Many things that casually get installed, such as Java or Quicktime have a resident background. It seems that every app I install has the arrogance to pollute my background process and I am constantly pulling this stuff back out. There are some programs, such as Spybot's Tea Timer that will catch this sort of stuff, but it catches tons of stuff you want to allow. Same with Norton 360. Besides, these work as well by spawning their own background process. I find that a lot of this stuff is 'secret' install, and you need to search it out in the registry. The danger there is that you can nuke some essential startup component and put the machine into never-never land.
Thanks! I have Norton I.S. ... thinking of uninstalling it and just putting anti-virus on it and will take real off etc..
One thing I like about Vista is they made it very easy to change the power modes. So when I am running my laptop off the charger, I switch it over to Power Saving mode and it helps the battery life dramatically.
It basically dims the screen, and supposedly slows down the machine a bit, but I don't have any issues with it. It runs perfectly fine in my opinion.
To change that, just click your mouse on the battery icon in the tray, a little menu will pop up, and select Power Saver.
It basically dims the screen, and supposedly slows down the machine a bit, but I don't have any issues with it. It runs perfectly fine in my opinion.
To change that, just click your mouse on the battery icon in the tray, a little menu will pop up, and select Power Saver.
Just to do a little test, I just switched my machine from Power Saver to High Performance to see what it estimated battery life at.
at 49% battery- power saver mode said 1 Hour 29 Minutes, High performance mode says 39 minutes remaining
at 49% battery- power saver mode said 1 Hour 29 Minutes, High performance mode says 39 minutes remaining
Played with the settings a little... Thanks! where do you find the minutes left?
Generally, you can just place the mouse over the battery icon and it will show you the estimated time remaining. If you don't see the battery icon, you may have to play with some settings in your task bar to always display an icon.
The best thing you can do is always run your machine on power saver mode and keep your charger plugged in whenever it is possible.
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The best thing is always run your machine on power saver mode and plugged the charger whenever it is possible.
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