HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR LAPTOP'S BATTERY LIFE

[TomTrottier]

The advice in the first post is good. Here's more:

Beforehand

1. NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) monitors your battery, but you can also use it to force your CPU to always go half speed (or slower via wait states) when it's on battery power.  Keeping cool also avoids powering up the fan.
2. Install the maximum RAM and turn off or reduce to the minimum the page file size
3. Use flash ram as your Cache memory, eg, a fast (266x or more) memory card. When you want to remove it, you must shut down, then restart. But don't use a USB key - you will forget it. You can also buy a replacement "hard disk" made only with flash memory - currently pricy.
   
4. Update the power options to turn off the "monitor" after 1 minute, hard disk after 3 (the minimums). I'd keep long times for standby or hibernate. Set your computer to hibernate when you close the lid, then close it if you don't need it for a while. Return from hibernation on my 1GB N100 is about 40 seconds.
5. A slow hard disk with a large buffer will reduce power consumption. Check active/standby power of disks. Our current Hitachi drives are pretty good.
6. Use JKdefrag to keep files defragmented - while power is on.

In Use

1. Quit, exit, or pause programs you don't need at the moment, including those in the system tray. You could use a BAT or CMD file to do this. Set full disk virus/spyware scans NOT to occur on battery power (but keep their monitoring active).
   
2. Manually turn down your brightness (via Fn-F11 on my 3000-n100) all the way.
3. Use BattStat to track your battery life, power, etc. It also enables you to set a hot key for instant screen off, and will have an auto-dim (if supported) in the future. See http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8515
   
4. Aside from the radio transmitters (wifi, bluetooth), I doubt if disabling anything else would save many electrons. The transmitters are easily switched off on the N100 by the switch on the front.

I get about 2:40 from my new battery when using the laptop to take minutes.

You could, of course, purchase a 2nd battery....

tOM

[iamdh]

Useful notes Tom, would update the main post soon.

[BEStech]

Great info. about batteries.  Can anyone direct me to a lenovo link about the default battery settings?  We changed the power options when students were testing without saving as a new power option and it has changed the default settings.  Thanks.

[wjli2]

The Battery itself acts as a UPS system, which is one of the reason that many Australian University are offering Lecturers and Researchers laptops instead of desktops, due to data security and lower cost of providing UPS and their maintenance. The UPS system is slightly cheaper, but the life time of the battery in Cheap UPS are very short, so this cancels out any advantage to be had with UPS. In addition, even with a UPS you may still accidently disconnect your power supply cable if you move it, most of the power connection only allow a movement of around 3 mm, which is not a lot. Whereas desktop's power supply cable slotted in far more tightly, as it is not designed for repeated plugging and unplugging. My T40 battery only failed recently that is after 600 charge and discharge cycle and it came originally with my T40 that was bought at the end of 2003. The battery in my X31 which i bought at the start of 2004 is still strong (provides around 2 and half hour on battery saver setting) after 300 charge and discharge.

The woes with lenovo battery is suffered by many other laptop manufacturers (Foxconn, Wistron and Compal) whom received a bad batch from Sony and Sanyo, which for various reasons had contamination in their battery manufacturing process, which caused overheating and rapid degradation of battery. Some of the Batteries in Dell's laptop exploded in some cases, which forced Dell to do an urgent recall of all the batteries. Some of the Ipod's battery were also notorious in the rapid degradation many just after 1 year warranty, which i have suffered. So much so the battery recall due to the improper manufacturing caused Sony to post a massive loss for that financial quarter. So the battery problem was not Lenovo's fault, everyone used battery from Sony and Sanyo all suffered the same fault, which is pretty much all of the laptop industry.

[wjli2]

Imadh in addition, the chemistry behind Liquid Crystal used in LCD dictates that the use of Black actually use more energy then use of lighter colors. Because in the natural states of Liquid Crystal when no external voltage is applied the Liquid Crystal aligns in such a way it is transparent, if you apply increasing amount of voltage the transparency disappears until when minimal lights are allowed through as in the case of black colour, where the Liquid Crystal block off most of the light coming from the backlighting. This is in contrast to CRT where Black colour occurs when there is no electron striking the phosphorus coating in the screen. However, most of the power consumed by the LCD is actually in the backlighting rather than the LCD components. This is also one of the reason that the early GameBoy Advance lacked any backlighting when it used the colour displays.

The LCD components consume most of the power when it is constantly refreshed, if you want to save power from LCD and its backlighting, switch it off using 'Power Off Display' function in the Thinkvantage Power Management system, which can be accessed from clicking on the 'Familiar Lenovo Green Battery Icon' on the taskbar or press Fn + F3.

[iamdh]

@wjli2: I too agree that black color actually consumes more energy. I myself experienced this heating phenomenon when I kept laptop with a screensaver (blank) or a black background for hours without any activity. Turning LCD monitor OFF is the best option. It reduces heating of keyboard / touchpad and internal components..

[iamdh]

This battery problem may not be actually fault on Lenovo's part. Hope Sony/Sanyo ensure better battery quality for laptops in future.

[Peter]

Based on posting 15, can I say the brightness control of LCD display is achieved by regulating the voltage applied to the LCD and not by varying the brightness of the back light, i.e, the light intensity of back light is always kept constant?

I always have a wrong idea that brighter display consumes more power.

[wjli2]

i think the brightness control is actually achieved by regulating the backlight, when you adjust to full brightness than the battery actually sortens and vice versa, what i am saying is that black colour in LCD actually consumes more power than more transparent colours.

[rnssww1]

I unfortunately ran my battery to 0%, (husband did, it his computer),  I plugged in the A/C but continue to have a black screen.  It shoes that it is in Hibernation.  I clicked the Fn key,  it didn't take it out of hibernation.  I press the power key thinking it would either turn on or turn off.  No avail.  ........I continue to have a black screen.  Please advise........red battery flashing and half moon flashing....

thank you