Notebooks are very common now, as they're much more affordable than they have been in the past. Well equipped 'books from companies like Dell start in the $700 to $1000 range if you shop around and look for discounts. But no matter what you pay for a notebook, you'll likely have the same complaints as most other notebook owners. Your notebook drains its battery like you never thought possible and you can't figure out why it's so sluggish compared to a similarly-equipped PC. Don't worry, young grasshopper, there is hope yet. After following a few steps, your notebook will be faster, more useful, last longer, and do so much more than you imagined it could.
Make That Battery Last Longer
Prolong your mobile experience, naturally!
A notebook's internal battery has a huge list of tasks to handle. It's operating a full-on PC (albeit on a much smaller scale), including a high-resolution LCD screen. One battery manages to operate the system, hard drive(s), accessories, cooling, sound, screen and external devices for two or more hours. And we're complaining about this -- sounds a bit greedy, doesn't it, considering much slower computers in the 1960s took thousands of dollars to run every day?
But this isn't the 1960s. These days, we're allowed to be greedy. Technology is on our side, so why can't our batteries last at least an extra 30 or so minutes? They can! We just need to tweak a few things...
First, when using battery power, set the brightness as low as you can tolerate. You may need to adjust the screen's angle slightly for a clear picture. Most notebooks have either a brightness adjustment on the case itself or via a shortcut key on the keyboard (on my Inspiron 5100 it's "Fn" and the up arrow). Set the brightness higher when you're plugged in if your notebook doesn't set it higher automatically. Modern notebooks should automatically change to a different power profile when plugged in.
Next, get used to using the touchpad or the other included pointing device. Don't rely on a mouse when you're using batteries unless you absolutely have to use one. An external mouse, especially an optical mouse, will use considerable extra power. On a related note, don't leave any devices plugged in that you do not require. For example, if you're not using a wireless network connection, don't leave your 802.11b PCMCIA card plugged in. Why waste the power if you don't need it? Now that the easy steps are out of the way, let's move on to something a little less obvious.
Power Schemes and Other Helpful Programs
With Windows XP, you can create multiple "Power schemes" (right click the battery icon in the system tray when unplugged) or edit current schemes in order to obtain the best battery life. The obvious benefit to this is that you can have a scheme for maximum battery life, one for watching DVDs unplugged, one for gaming, etc.
My settings for "Max Battery" are: Turn off monitor after 1 minute, hard disks after 3 minutes, standby after 10 minutes, and hibernate after 20 minutes. These settings might sound excessive, but my notebook lasts about three and a half hours like this, where most reviews only saw around two and a half to three with the same unit.
Note that on Standby, a notebook will use very little power and probably last several times longer than normal mode. Hibernate basically lasts forever though, as it will write a footprint of the current memory, programs, etc. to the hard drive then shut the notebook down entirely. This is ideal if you're not in a huge hurry and you're planning to go without using the notebook for 20+ minutes at a time.
More Power Saving Techniques
Most notebooks with mobile CPUs will include a program to adjust the clock speed of the CPU to save power while you're on the go. Take advantage of such utilities and be sure to drop the speed way down when you don't need it -- you don't need 2 GHz to play Spider Solitaire or write a Word Document. Notebooks that use desktop equivalent CPUs (such as the Pentium 4 CPUs found in the Dell Inspiron 5100) cannot scale the CPU speed but generally include a larger battery to compensate for this.
You should avoid using intensive programs and devices when your notebook is unplugged, especially drives. Both hard disk and optical drives will cause your notebook to waste a ton of power. Don't burn CDs, watch DVDs, and run 3D games or other memory intensive applications unless you really require them or you have a place to plug-in. Along the same lines, it might be a good idea to disable any extra programs you don't need to free up memory, as this can reduce disk access. There are plenty of guides on our site (such as the XP Refresh Guide) that cover this topic in detail.
