How can I eke the most battery life out of my laptop?
I have a 10 hour bus trip next week, and I’m not looking forward to that Greyhound ride. My laptop, with the wifi off and the screen brightness all the way down, gets about 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of battery life.
Do you have any other tips or tricks I could use to squeeze out a little more battery life out of this thing?
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8 Answers
I found this site that has a few good suggestions. link
OK,
We need to know:
1. Laptop make and model.
2. Operating system.
3. Your level of proficiency with computers.
@the100thmonkey
1. It’s an Acer Aspire 7741Z-5731. 1.86 ghz dual core processor and 3 gig ram
2. Windows 7 Professional
3. I’m tech support with heavy emphasis on windows XP computers, and I’m fairly confident with windows 7.
If that is what you get with the wifi off and backlight on minimum, then I don’t see you making the trip on one battery by long shot. Of course, you probably already knew that.
I assume that you set the hard drive to spin down pretty quick as well. I can tell when the hard drive spins down on my Toshiba T135 since, with wifi on and the screen brightness on 4/8, my battery monitor jumps from just under five hours to about six and a half; quite a savings. (I have mine set to spin down after 2 minutes while on battery power.) Dig around in the Power Options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings if you haven’t done so already
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@jerv I knew I wouldn’t get all 10 hours in one shot, but I did manage to jump up to about 5. I haven’t tried slowing the harddrive spin yet, but I think that’s my next goal if I need it.
If I’m lucky, I’ll have enough time during a transfer to charge it back up.
If you get the same results I did (percentage-wise) then that will put you well over 6, and that would be a good thing.
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