How to get the most out of your laptop battery?

Much to the disappointment of many professors, the majority of Northwestern students bring their laptops to class these days. Under clean digital notes and with the Internet as a resource are wonderful advantages over old-fashioned notebook. Unfortunately, most laptops only take two or three hours' work. If you've ever had three classes just passed out lecture halls (or if you forgot your laptop before class fee) probably have to power down your computer, click the middle of watching lectures. As a victim of the five-hour class block with a two-hour Dell Inspiron 1545 battery, I found many useful steps to follow that every student can make it through the day.

First Ride the brightness

Each laptop has an adjustable brightness switch that can turn the backlight on the screen up or down. The light that illuminates the screen is actually one of the biggest drains on the Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery and must be treated as such. Keep to a minimum brightness (make sure you can still see). In personal studies, I found a 25-minute difference in battery life between at full brightness and minimum brightness. Also, do not be afraid to switch at regular intervals jockey. It can be very helpful to cut the lights to zero during a long lecture that requires not just think you notes. It happens. If you're pretty sure you will have such a grace period, you can also try adding the rest.

Second Hibernation

Your computer has undoubtedly a sleep mode or hibernation function that puts the laptop on standby, save your work so that it show up again when you wake up the matter again. This is particularly important when the power is low, since sleep mode (Mac) or Standby (PC) uses almost no power at all - just a hint of RAM to keep ticking.

Third Less Wireless

Wireless reception takes a lot of Dell Inspiron 1720 battery life - a few watts per day. Probably the most efficient to do what they could to would be to save energy, turn off the WiFi if possible to keep. The same goes for Bluetooth, you may not use, if you zap pictures of lolcats are your neighbors in the class, so make sure that off at all times.

4th Close the things

This may seem like child's play, but any program running on the computer will take up energy. Start with your hand and close anything you do not use. Major programs such as Photoshop or iTunes (it happens) are a major drain on power, and even Word and Firefox are great programs. Once that was running out of the way, check your taskbar or dock and watch carefully for anything that you did not know. It is easy to minimize a program and forget about it, so you never know when Skype and iPhoto trucking somewhere out of sight. Another good way to get more detail ...

5th Monitor

Every psych professor will tell you that the people can act differently when they see exactly what they are doing. You will find a lot more on fuel when your Prius is the display of all the smallest details about the engine and battery to concentrate. The same applies to the computer. Download iStat monitor program or as Informer - free widget that will tell you what's going on in your computer. You can see how much memory each process uses, and act accordingly. In addition, these programs tell you your battery's Health Level, which is the most important statistic of all. And if you're really bad health ...

6th Buy a new battery

Nothing lasts forever, and laptop batteries are no exception. In fact, they are are usually at about 80 percent of the operating system expects one or two years. If you find that you always run worse, you may have to bite the bullet and a spare battery for about $ 80 - $ 130 depending on manufacturer. Before you buy, do you call your computer manufacturer's customer service or visit the Apple Store, if it's a Mac. If your Dell Inspiron 1520 battery is in poor health and the computer is new, under warranty or if they feel friendly, you might get a new charge.

7th Keep it plugged in

Whenever you make a socket, as used in the residence halls can keep the laptop plugged in the DELL XPS M1530 battery life is measured in cycles - each time you drain and fill the battery cells, it ticks out like a cycle. The more cycles you go through, the more likely you are to wear the health, which means that the battery capacity is gradually reduced. If you keep it fully charged and plugged in, if possible, the computer will draw power directly from the charger and not wear out the Dell Inspiron 1525 battery. Do not get too anal about this, but it is useful to know.

And if all else fails:

8th Get a Macbook Pro

All new MacBooks have built-in battery with 7-9 hours of battery life. These things are crazy. If you can not afford to go Mac, you read carefully the specifications of a new laptop and see how many cells the Dell Latitude E6400 battery has, as well as the expected lifetime. Just be careful to avoid the B.S. avoided by "up to X hours" and only use this number in relation to other computers to see whether it is above or below average.