This article will talk about what you should do if you want to save some power on your laptop when you are running on battery and not connected to some other power source to recharge your laptop.
This article is written for laptops that have primarily Windows Vista or Windows 7 installed however, these steps still apply to many other laptops with different operating systems such as Mac OS X, Linux operating systems and more.
Steps 3 and 4 are for Windows Vista/Windows 7 while the other steps apply to everything, (including Windows Vista/7).
1st of all, when you’re running intensive programs such as games that require a lot of processing power and graphics, it might be a good idea to cut back on it if you aren’t hooked to the power outlet on the wall as that is one major factor that drains your power. Reading an e-book or surfing the web definitely consumes less power.
2nd, it is generally a good idea to lower the brightness of your laptop screen to the point where you can still see and it does not have any strain on your eye when you try to read it. The brightness can consume a lot of power depending on what brightness level you set it at. If you want, you can also set your desktop background picture to a solid black which can reduce the brightness and save some more power.
3rd, depending on what operating system you have… for Windows Vista/7, you want to go to the power options which can be accessed by going to Start –> Type “Power Options” in the start menu search and hit enter and then a window should pop up and you want to find “power saver” which means you are setting a rule on your computer to use less power as much as possible to conserve battery power. If you are charging your laptop while using it, you should use the “High performance” option, especially when playing games or using programs that need a lot of power.
4th, if you are using Windows Aero, which is the aesthetic looks of your desktop for Windows Vista/7 which makes the border of your Windows and task bar become like a glass window, you can turn it off, by right clicking on the desktop background and click on “Personalize”. Once a window pops up, for Windows Vista, click on “Windows Color and Appearance” and then go to the drop down menu on the new window that pops up and select Windows Vista basic instead of Windows Aero. For Windows 7, right click on the desktop background and select and click personalize. Then go to “Window Color” at the bottom of the pop up and click on that and then look the transparency option and uncheck the “Enable Transparency” box. This will turn off Windows Aero.
5th, if you have bluetooth on your computer, and it is enabled, then it is a good idea to turn it off if you want to save some additional power if you are not using it. If you are not using wireless Internet at the moment and not for awhile, then it is generally a good idea on turning it off to save more power though not by a lot.
6th, if you want, you can turn off the sound by muting it to save some power but that doesn’t really help a lot but may help a bit.
Last but not least, if you aren’t even using your laptop, then it is a good idea to turn it off or put it in standby/sleep or even hibernation mode to save power. This step is important if you want to save power for your laptop if you are not using it for more than 20 minutes. Putting your computer to sleep or in standby mode will reduce CPU consumption of power as well as the hard drive’s consumption of power.
The Windows Mobility Center picture below is very useful to make configurations to your computer when you are running off of your battery.
Image via Wikipedia
I hope you find this article very helpful and if there is anything that I missed or made a mistake, please let me know. Have a great day, thanks for reading!
