MDub, a fellow blogger of mine wrote a great article on how to keep your laptop in tip-top shape when it comes to heat management.
I just wanted to add a quick comment to his topic.
This is the last in the series of how to purchase a laptop that you won’t regret purchasing.
A quick recap:
- Purchase a laptop that has a battery life of at least three hours.
- Purchase a laptop that has a warranty of at least three years.
- Be prepared for the laptop to break, 90% chance that will happen.
- Don’t expect your laptop to operate like a super computer.
- Buy an operating system you are familiar with.
When to buy a laptop.
In this last article I am going to impart a recent secret I learned to purchasing a laptop. There are times of the year that are better for buying a laptop (especially when you order one online.) I have found (between the experience of friends and myself) that the best possible time to order a laptop is during the early spring. Here are some of the factors that contribute to why: Continue Reading →
What Do Your Plan To Use Your Laptop For?
I have found that my desired use for a laptop has greatly affected what I am looking to purchase when I look at laptops. Often I am tempted to look for power house machines because I used to be a big 3d animation buff (Like Finding Nemo’s animation) and I have been wanting to get back into that. Unfortunately, I really don’t have time to really fulfill that dream so I just use my new laptops to surf the net, blog here, write papers for school, etc. Basically, my laptops are roaming information systems.
The question you need to ask when you are gearing up to purchase a laptop (or any computer for that matter) is what you plan to be using that machine for. I have talked a bit about the natural strengths and weaknesses of laptops but many of those can be overcome with a large enough monetary investment in the top tech of today. The real question is: do you really NEED a powerful computer? Only you can really answer this question, but lets break down some needs for a powerful laptop. Continue Reading →
If you own a laptop then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Those last few moments, when you wish you could give up some of your own blood to make your laptop last just a few minutes more. Those moments where you keep watching the battery life monitor as it slowly ticks down….5%….4%….. and then your computer enters into suspend mode or hibernation. If only you could get your laptop to last just a tad bit longer! How nice would that be?
Well these tips should help you do just that.
The Five Pointers to Extending Your Laptop’s Battery Life
- Remove All Unnecessary Running Programs - Any software that you are running which takes up any amount of CPU power is eating your battery life away like acid. If you are a multi-tasker like I am then you are going to have to give that up when you go mobile so that you can extend the working time of your machine. Close any programs that you no longer plan to use. Also close programs that are in your system tray (The small icons on the bottom right side of your start bar).
- Turn Off Excess Hardware - I was shocked to see what plugging in a wireless USB mouse did to my battery life. I shaved off 20 minutes by using my Logitech USB mouse. If you want your laptop to last you may just want to make due with your touch pad.My smaller, portable laptop comes with a switch to turn off my wireless card. This is a great way to save on battery life if I am not using the internet while on my laptop’s battery. So remove any USB devices you don’t utterly need and also disable any hardware that you can do without (such as wireless and blue tooth.) If you don’t know what this stuff is, ask your LCG. He can tell you more about them.
- Dim Your Laptop’s Screen - This is a tough call. If you are in a bright area then this may not work for you. If you can swing it, though, then this is one of the biggest battery savers for your machine. The screen accounts for up to 75% of the power that your laptop goes through on a regular basis. If you dim the screen down a bit then you stand to save significant amounts of power. I can double my laptop’s battery life by switching from the brightest screen setting to the dimmest setting (which is still viewable indoors for me.) You will find what is the best balance between screen brightness and battery life for you.
- Exercise Your Battery - This is an age old tip for working with rechargeable batteries. You can literally condition them to work longer and harder than they would otherwise. The trick to this? Simple, when you start to discharge the battery (say for 30 minutes) allow the battery to actually discharge for its full life cycle (3 hours or so depending on your battery). If you can pull this off then you will find that your battery will gain an extra 10% or so of battery life over time. In order for this to work you also have to charge it completely after you have completely discharged it! So be sure that you’ll be able to have the time to charge it all the way when you get around to charging it back up!
- Set your power settings to power save mode - Your laptop (if it isn’t set up this way already) has an option that allows you to cut the CPU speed in favor of saving you some serious battery life. To find your power manager just find the battery icon (or plug icon if it is plugged in) and right click it and select “power options”. The dialog that pops up should have an option for setting your computer from dynamic or high performance to power save mode when your system is on battery. This will give you a fairly large boost to how long you can go without a battery.
Squeeze it like a lemon!
Hopefully this short guide will help you to save just that little extra bit of power from your system. It is always nice to have a laptop that doesn’t choke and die 20 minutes after it is unhooked from the wall. So allow it to be efficient about its power use and it will thank you by lasting just that little bit longer!
God Bless,
-Daniel Kolansky
The Warranty is the most important part of a laptop
If you are planning to buy a laptop then I would bet that you are planning to take the laptop with you when you leave home (at least sometimes!) This means that your laptop is going to be banged, shaken, turned upside down, swung around, exposed to direct sunlight, wired up to foreign power outlets, and a multitude of other harmful stimuli. Honestly, it is a wonder that laptops last as long as they do, but it is inevitable that your new laptop is going to eventually break. Laptops are very sturdy for their design but they are just not capable of taking the wear and tear that a laptop usually receives, even from the most careful people (like myself.) Continue Reading →
Purchasing a laptop that you will want to keep rests on several factors. In my last post I talked about size. Laptops that are too large tend to break and also tend to be quite a pain to drag around with you.
Battery Life is Critical To Your Future Laptop
In this post I want to talk a little bit about battery life and why it is so critical to your enjoyment of a laptop. I’m not going to pretend that I know your every desire, but the overall trend with people and technology is that people expect technology to perform at god-like quality. This means that if you order a laptop, chances are you expect it to be portable. Now, you may have listened to me and started looking at smaller laptops. That does not mean that the battery will last. Laptops have different size batteries, different quality batteries, and different technology. A small laptop with a graphics processor is not going to last nearly as long as a laptop that isn’t equipped with one. A laptop with a 6-cell battery is not going to last as long as a laptop with a 9-cell. The secret to finding how long a battery life your laptop has is to search on Google for product reviews of the laptop you are looking for. Use what the company you want to purchase from tells you as a guide but do not trust their tests as they often manipulate the data for advertising purposes. Continue Reading →
After working with a laptop I purchased two and a half years ago that has broken time and time again I have learned a thing or two about purchasing laptops which has saved me a lot of sleepless nights talking to tech support (because I replaced it with a better laptop!) This guide will give you the mindset you need to be in when you are looking for a laptop that you are planning to keep. Continue Reading →
“Because technology works for you, not the other way around.”