What is Digg?169 Comments
- ghee, on 10/16/2007, -1/+123"14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop"
So crazy it just might work. - ohandre, on 10/11/2007, -2/+62in other words.... don't use your laptop
- KevinLiu, on 10/11/2007, -3/+56This is ridiculous. Don't multitask?
- matdwyer, on 10/11/2007, -2/+52One thing to add is that a lot of laptops come with Bluetooth, which I find takes up a fair bit of battery when I leave it enabled. Might save 10-15 minutes turning it off
- FIip, on 10/11/2007, -4/+43I wanted to read this article, but my battery died just as I was clicking on the link.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+40This list proved itself bunk at #1 - Defragging your Macbook can actually make the performance worse. There was some article on Digg a while back about that... Considering there's a MB in the picture, I expect the author should know that.
"Keep the battery contacts clean" - lol, how about just not removing your battery? Should I scrub my RAM too?
Also, "Don't Multitask" - what kind of advice is this? Here's a good one: To save battery power, turn your laptop off!
I'm done with this. Buried as lame. - tzonic, on 10/11/2007, -6/+34Edited photo of MacBook (the aspect ratio of the screen is nowhere near what a MacBook's is) with #1 on the list being 'defrag regularly'. Very interesting.
- cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+24Many laptops also allow you to turn off the wireless card, if you are not using it at the time.
- Nidy1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+24I don't like the idea of turning off autosave when my laptop battery is low and might die. -_- Isn't it built for those situations?
- WoollyMittens, on 10/16/2007, -1/+22Turning off wireless is a good one too. It's easy to just leave on. I forget that all the time.
- jeffeb3, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21Lithium Ion batteries should never be left uncharged. Each battery has a charging chip that protects it from being charged unsafely, and it tells the computer what the status is etc. When you leave a lion battery it's constantly being discharged by this chip, and if it gets too low, the chip will fail-safe and kill the battery. You won't be able to charge it at all. On a dead battery, it can happen in as little as a few months. Just use your lithium batteries like you want, and they will reward you for it. There's no wear and tear applicaple except when the charge gets too low. LION batteries will lose life however, but it's just based on time, there's nothing you can do about it, and using it less or more has little effect.
- nwoolls, on 10/11/2007, -2/+17Wake up on the wrong side of the bed or just naturally an *****? Would it have been much harder to type "it may be a 12 inch ibook", or would that not have tickled your e-peen as much?
- EBFoxbat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+141) It's clearly not a Macbook. Macbooks don't have ports on the back nor a glow eminating from the bottom middle of them.
2) Holy ***** don't EVER clean the contacts on your battery. If they need to be cleaned then something isn't right, get a new battery or a new laptop (your's is probably very old if the contacts need cleaning). It's almost impossible for the average laptop user to clean the contacts on their battery without shorting it. LiPos DO NOT like to be shorted. - boberto, on 10/16/2007, -5/+18This omits probably the biggest cause of shortened laptop battery life:
If you are operating with the laptop plugged in for extended periods of time when the battery is already charged, remove the battery. Even if it is not charging there is still electrical current running through it which will shorten its lifespan. - toomanyhandles, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12If you don’t believe the guy from the laptop company who posted in the blog comments, take a read at www.batteryuniversity.com
The “drain the battery” days are long gone. Modern LiON batteries have no memory effect and should be stored at 1/2 charge for best results, fully charged is acceptable, stored drained = ruined battery. They also lose maximum capacity whether you use them or not, so don’t worry much about charge cycles.
The battery tips here are pretty much 100% wrong, and will cause maximum damage. Sorry guy.
And defragging and mentioning Mac laptops is silly. There were multiple tests (linked to from digg?) that showed speed results before and after defragging sessions- one or 2% increase is all. Not worth the effort. - gannondork, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1417. Don't use Vista or XP.
- eam52guy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10And what do you do on your laptops that requires them to be less than 3 months old? I can't think of an app off the top of my head.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10The circuit that protects LiPos (and LiIons) will simply turn the battery off when the per-cell voltage gets too low. Lithium batteries can't be drained to zero or they will never recharge again. The circuit prevents them from draining below their safe-voltage. It also prevents over charging. You can think of it as a very smart switch between the contacts and the cells inside. It decides when it is and is not safe to allow current to flow in or out of a given cell.
It's not smart (actually it's not fast) enough to prevent shorts though. Don't clean your contacts, you'll likely short your Lithium bomb...err battery. - damentz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Digg for using celery instead of celeron.
- nwoolls, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11Someone more knowledgeable can speak up, but I had heard this was no longer the case with newer laptop batteries. Maybe? Maybe not? I asked around when I got my newest laptop and the general consensus, even among those who practiced this same thing, was that it was no longer necessary.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -5/+14@TRENT310:
Well la dee da, aren't you special? Thanks for the pointless overshare. *****. - Comanche, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9"Keep the battery contacts clean."
Its a freaking battery giving power, not a composite or coax cable transfering a signal. Maybe if the laptop doesent turn on that would be obvious. - BenBenMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Here's another one for the list: How about setting up a RAM disk? If you cached all your apps and your frequently used data to RAM then you wouldn't have to use the hard disk anywhere near as much, resulting in less battery use. Like a hybrid hard disk, but not.
- zadadka, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Contrary to MrHappy, I find modern laptops require the battery as part of the circuit.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Get a second battery?
- Brss45, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7#15 is kinda stupid. If your batteries give out before I am ready for it, I'd rater the machine have saved more and waste batteries (very indirectly doing so, i'm sure it's a few seconds or less) than lose power and all data.
- fxspec06, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7... but don't forget to hibernate
- ShamrockMan, on 10/16/2007, -0/+7Tip #8 (Take care of your battery), has some harmful advice for laptops with lithium batteries. Do not let your batteries fully discharge then leave them lying around, as this causes irreversible damage to the battery. Keep at least 80% charge in the battery if you are going to store it for any length of time.
- swavalier711, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8I do not believe this is the case. Judging by the heat, all the power comes from the adapter.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Errr... you're hard drive shouldn't be spinning always.
- cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Very interesting, and somewhat inaccurate.
Yes, defragging should help make using the hard drive more efficient, but what is more efficient is trying to avoid heavy use of the drive
while on battery.
Take the advice of tip #9, and try to hibernate the laptop before you disconnect it from external power (and after you have loaded the apps you need to run while traveling), so it will load that setup faster when you next boot the system, putting less energy into running the drive at startup.
...And try to avoid things like playing movies or music, some games, burning CD or DVDs, and other file-intensive activities while on battery. - damentz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Multitasking obviously ruins the battery because the processor gets angry, thus overheats. I think thats what the author was thinking.
- TRENT310, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Depends on your refrigerator's temperature. Store it in a cool environment, but not a freezing cold one. It's not that lithium ion batteries can't be stored in the fridge (or even freezer, because it has a low freezing point), it's that it takes more time to return to room temperature before you can safely use it.
- fatdog789, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Doesn't worth with Li-On batteries. Only NiCads and Alkiline (ie, Duracell).
- TRENT310, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Well, if you're going to use your laptop plugged in forever, then what's the point of having a laptop? For the battery backup? :P
Anyway, no, chargers aren't THAT bad. Of course there will be a bit of current running through it, it's a trickle charge because batteries do lose charge by themselves, and this keeps the cells topped up.
You don't need to always recalibrate your batteries. Full deep discharges are the things that take a toll on the batteries, and that's what a recalibration does. What matters is the real amount of time the battery can run the laptop, not what the meter estimates. - realwx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Don't use Toshiba batteries at all?
- yabos, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7There's nothing wrong with putting batteries in the freezer. It's a good way to extend the charge life.
- daphreak, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Considering that batteries are chemical electric cells, I find your explanation of "realigning the particles" a bit unbelievable.
@jeffeb3 it is is well known that storing batteries in a fridge will keep them from losing their charge as quickly (for example unused alkalines). I have never heard of using a freezer. But considering the difference between a fridge and a freezer are based on WATER's freezing point I think the effect would be similar and not as dangerous as you claim. - DemDude, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6What do you think takes more power? A high density laser or a simple electro-magnet?
- GawtMilk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I'd say that one they didn't mention on the list is to get a new battery around every six months or year (you can keep the old ones as backup). I use an old T43, which gets about two hours from 100% to 10%, where upon I turn it off. I ran into another T43 user and told him about my terrible battery life, he told me that he gets great ~5 hour battery life from the stock batteries, doing the same things I do. As it turns out, that was what I HAD been getting, but since I've been using this battery for nearly two years, the life has halved.
- JonnyTrombone, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I've got two batteries for an old Dell that are inexplicably expensive to replace. I'll get the charge capacity before and after... and if this works, you're my new best friend.
- BalooUrsidae, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Heat dissipation is not an accurate measure of battery wear. Do your Duracells get hot when they're dead? How about your car battery?
- mercurysquad, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5back in the day, you could put a misbehaving floppy disk into the fridge and it would work again after half hour ...
- cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5He is somewhat correct while it is spinning. But you guys are also correct that the drive will spin down to save on power when it has been idle for too long.
The problem is in the amount of power needed to spin the drive back up from sleep, and how often it needs to do that to get to the information that the user deals with on a regular basis. That is where having a more efficient drive can make a difference. - fkr3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Anything made by Adobe struggles on hardware more than 1 nanosecond old.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5We all know that Digg users don't get out- so just plug the laptop in...
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Wow, a Digger who's not afraid to use his RAM for storing caches. Imagine that.
Just so you know, most popular OSes already do this. Linux shadows often used portions of disk into RAM (and at the same time shadows less often pages of memory to disk), Mac OS X does very conservative disk caching and Windows.. well there's that SuperFetch thing in Vista, but if XP does it, I'm unaware. - cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I had never heard this tip before, but a quick google search would indicate that at least storing NiCad and Li-ion batteries in the freezer should not harm them. I may have to try that trick with an old laptop I have which appears to have a dead battery.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4From what I've read, the only reason defragging could be perceived as making your Mac perform worse is right after you do it. Something about reindexing all the files or some crap.
I seriously doubt defragging will increase your disk seek time once the drive is indexed. If you do believe that...well, what can I say other than [citation needed]. - cactus476, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8If you have a battery that's on its way out or already dead, wrap it in a towel, put the towel in a gallon plastic bag and then place it in a freezer for 48 hours. When you take it out, let it warm up to room temperature before you charge it again. Freezing the battery realigns the particles in the battery allowing it to hold a longer charge.
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