Get more from your laptop or tablet battery
Batteries are the driving force and the
Achilles' Heel of the modern world they enable us to do amazing things, but
they don't last as long as we'd like them to. Don't despair, though, as there
are a few simple steps you can take to ensure your batteries last longer.
Batteries don't benefit from constant
discharging and recharging, and in some cases the manufacturer even provides a
utility to prevent that. For example, Sony and Lenovo limit recharging to 80%
in order to prolong the battery's lifespan. To get a full charge before a trip,
disable the limit.
If you won't be using your device for a while,
don't leave it with zero charge or a full charge both can reduce the lifespan
of your battery. If you're going to be storing the device for a while,
manufacturers such as Apple recommend you store batteries or battery-powered
devices with a half-charge.
Batteries don't last forever, and as they age,
they become less efficient. Windows will warn you if your battery's health is
seriously bad, but you can check it yourself using a Windows command. To do
that, start Command Prompt and run it as Administrator. Now type “power cfg
batteryreport“ and press Enter.
Windows will now create an HTML document called
BatteryReport in the root of your C: drive.There are two key bits of
information here: the design capacity, which is how much power the battery is
supposed to store, and the full charge capacity, which is what you're actually
getting. If there's a huge difference between the two, it's time for a new
battery.
Recalibrate the battery
Don't assume that an unhappy battery is a broken
one it could be that your battery needs to be recalibrated. An incorrectly
calibrated battery can tell Windows the wrong information about its remaining
charge, and it might even shut your system down without warning.
Many manufacturers provide utilities to do
recalibration for you, but it's also an easy DIY job: fully charge it, let it
sit for a while, then go into power options and set critical battery level to 5
per cent and critical battery action to Hibernate.Run the computer until it
shuts down, let it sit for a few hours and then charge it back up.
Choose a low-power plan
In Windows 8.1 (but not RT 8.1) you can choose
the Balanced or Power Saver power plans to reduce battery drain. Balanced tries
to guess when you need and don't need power, while Power Saver prioritises
battery saving over perform ance. You can also tweak the plans to customise the
power settings.
Apple's power management settings are in System
Preferences > Energy Saver. They aren't as comprehensive as the preferences
in Windows, but Apple has done a lot of tinkering under the hood of OS X to
improve battery life on Macs.
The screen is a major battery killer.Turning the
brightness down can make a big difference to the amount of power it consumes.
If your device automatically adjusts the screen
brightness to suit ambient lighting conditions, try interfering. Manufacturers'
ideas of correct brightness are often too bright, especially when we're working
indoors. Don't bother with a screensaver. Just get your device to sleep when
it's idle instead of using power to display pretty pictures.
Unplug your accessories
If your USB devices don't have their own
chargers, that means they're bus-powered, so they're getting their juice from
your device.Unplug anything you don't need right now. It's particularly
important with older USB Wi-Fi adapters, which can draw a surprising amount of
power. More recent 801.11n and 802.11ac adapters are more energy efficient, but
they'll still draw power when connected.
PC cards, flash drives, Wi-Fi radios, mobile
dongles... once again, if you don't need them just now, unplug or disable them.
Anything that's communicating with your PC's innards needs power to do so, and
radios such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are notorious repeat offenders.
Some laptops have hardware switches to turn the
radios on and off. If they don't, Windows ena bles you to do it via soft ware.
In Windows 8, press the Windows key + C and navi gate to Settings > Change
PC Settings > Wireless.
Our devices are designed on the assumption that
we'll always have an internet connection, and that means all kinds of apps and
services will use the connection in the background. Going completely offline or
entering Airplane Mode on a tablet stops that background baggage.
Also remember to keep your antivirus and
anti-malware software up to date, as dodgy downloads are notorious for using
internet connections without users' knowledge.
The more you demand from your device, the more
power it'll need, so the less of a load you put on your system, the longer
it'll run. Don't just quit obvious apps use Windows' System Configuration
Utility (MSCONFIG) or Apple's Activity Monitor to spot and stop resource-hungry
services. Make sure you have enough RAM, too reading from and writing to RAM is
more energy efficient.
Don't leave your laptop or tablet in a car on a
hot day. Heat and cold adversely effect battery lifespan.You don't want to use
them in overly hot or cold conditions either, because that can have disastrous
effects on your device's performance and battery. As a rule of thumb, if the
temperature's uncomfortable for you, it's not doing your battery any favours
either.
If you're using a Mac powered by Mavericks or
Yosemite, and running Google Chrome, you're losing hours. Apple has carefully
optimised its browser's power consumption, but Google hasn't. We've seen a
difference of one to three hours between Chrome-based browsing and sticking
with Safari.
Carry a spare
This isn't always possible since recent Apple
laptops and most tablets don't have replaceable batteries, but many laptops can
handle bigger, longer lasting batteries than the ones they ship with. If you
don't want that added bulk, you could always get an external laptop battery.
These often come with ports not just for laptops, but for USBcharging devices
such as tablets too.
|
Gary Marshall
|
MM27AUG15
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