Maxing battery life?

Theres a program you can get for laptops to reduce the core voltage, supposidly yields massive battery savings?
 
[TW]Fox;14286740 said:
Got overkill?

Incidently is my Laptop supposed to take so long to charge - it takes about 4 hours to fully charge both batteries. Seems a bit ridiculous that it takes 50% of the battery life to actually charge it fully...
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That sounds fine.... With li-ion cells it's best to charge them slowly otherwise they overheat and go bang! :eek:
 
The bootable USB with Linux on is pretty simple to do. You need to download 2 things, a program to make the USB drive bootable, called Disk Imager (it's tiny.. like 30 or 40k i think) and the .img (kinda like a .iso) of the linux distro you're after.

For ease of use, i'd suggest Ubuntu's Netbook Remix designed specifically to remove all the filler for low spec low battery machines. Find it here. Installation is horribly, horribly simple via here.

Most importantly though is, you dont need to install linux on your laptop at all. Throw the USB stick in, boot up, set the boot option in bios to USB (name of the drive), then when it loads the menu screen, select "try Ubuntu Netbook Remix". It's a fully working operating system running right off the USB drive, without making any changes to the laptop itself. it has media players and instant messengers and all that jazz. Use the leftovers of the USB stick for your movies and you're set!
 
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My concern with using UNR is that I've yet to find an easy way to control CPU speed, so there's a good chance it'll allow the CPU to use its full clock speed whereas the Power Saving scheme in Vista or 7 wouldn't. I've got UNR on my netbook and its power management options are fairly rubbish.
 
It was just an example, really. There are plenty of low capacity linux distros out there. Mint is supposedly pretty awesome now.

Why not just underclock the CPU the old fashioned way, in the BIOS? Fox's laptop should have all the standard power options (i dd on my D600)
 
DampCat said:
Most importantly though is, you dont need to install linux on your laptop at all. Throw the USB stick in, boot up, set the boot option in bios to USB (name of the drive), then when it loads the menu screen, select "try Ubuntu Netbook Remix". It's a fully working operating system running right off the USB drive, without making any changes to the laptop itself. it has media players and instant messengers and all that jazz. Use the leftovers of the USB stick for your movies and you're set!
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This sounds fantastic. If Windows 7 is giving me about 8 hours on a charge, how many additional hours could I hope to acheive from this method?
 
A program called "unetbootin" makes it very easy to make bootable USB sticks with Linux on.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Give it a go, you may even be able to remove the hard drive altogether, which may give 10 hours if you can do everything from a USB stick.

All I can suggest is to try it as I haven't been able to measure exactly how much power a USB stick uses, but I imagine it's less than 0.5w and maybe even as low as 0.05w (the same as an LED!). :)
 
You would do well to disable any active antivirus software you have aswell, that will eat extra cpu cycles and use extra power. I am guessing all this is for your long flight to Aus :D ...I've done some long flights myself, but no more than 10 hours, so I can well understand you wanting to eek every last ounce of life from your batteries.
 
You guess well - i have 12 hour 25 flight then 2.5 hours at KL Airport which wont be enough time for a proper charge then an 8 hour flight :eek:
 
Have you considered getting a spare battery? Shouldn't cost you more than about £50 if you check out that auction site, and it'll be useful in the future if you go walkabout with a laptop for some reason lol :p
 
The other thing that's important with maximising battery life is the condition of the batteries in the first place. Li-Ion cells hate being at 100% or close to 0% and will lose much more of their charge this way (they naturally lose some charge each year at normal operating temperatures as it is).

Thinkpads have a great utility that allows you to set battery charging thresholds, mine are set to start charging at 35% and stop at 55%, this reduces the number of full discharg cycles and thus keeps the battery capacity higher for longer. When I need to be away from AC I then charge to 100%. Does Dell offer something similar?

The other thing you can do is keep any spare batteries in an airtight/watertight bag in the fridge (not freezer) with some moisture absorbing sachets or risotto rice.
 
[TW]Fox;14306641 said:
You guess well - i have 12 hour 25 flight then 2.5 hours at KL Airport which wont be enough time for a proper charge then an 8 hour flight :eek:
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Do you have any backup device you can use like an iPod Touch or PSP?

I stopped all unused services on my laptop along with disabling the USB Hubs, modem, Wireless and slightly dimming the screen. Battery life on my Dell D600 went from 2 hours to just over 4 hours.
 
The other option is to do what I do when the batteries run dry ....and or I run out of things to watch. Read a book :D ...I just finished 'A.A. Gill, Previous Convictions' ...very funny and well written, that would keep you entertained for a good number of hours I'm sure.
 
The resolution that the display is running at on the desktop won't make any noticeable difference the battery life, but it will make a hell of a difference to your eyes. Running Windows and watching videos is nothing like playing a 3D game.
 
miniyazz said:
Have you considered getting a spare battery? Shouldn't cost you more than about £50 if you check out that auction site, and it'll be useful in the future if you go walkabout with a laptop for some reason lol :p
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Already sorted that. I have:

1x Standard battery
1x Extended capacity battery
2x Modular bay batteries

Giving two sets of two batteries :)

I'm using a standard and a modular at the moment at Uni - screen on almost full brightness, Wifi and Bluetooth connected with quite a few apps open. I've 54% left and it reckons 2 hours 44, so 6 hours on a full charge. Wonder if I can double that with no bluetooth, no wifi, stuff disabled, lower screen brightness..
 
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MikeHunt79 said:
It should do if the power options are set properly.

Give it a go, you may be able to hear the HD spin down if you're in a quiet enough room and make sure the mains cable is unplugged. :)
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no it won't the player/codecs/drivers are still on the hard drive..

was about to suggest, get a modular battery

I have the D600, I have 2x normal batteries and 2x modular

you can swap them over on the fly when it's on, so can get around 18+ hours battery from mine








on mine I run a heavily cut down version of XP SP3
 
18 hours plus sounds very promosing, my setup is the same as yours but its a 620 and one of my batteries is extended.

However I've got the 2.33Ghz T7700 which I guess might hamper the battery life.

Also running Windows 7 - likely to consume more or less power than XP SP3?
 
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