15 Ways to Extend Laptop Battery Life
 

Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.<br><br>
Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/07/01/...-battery-life/

Doesn't adding RAM increase power usage? ;)

rams consumes only a little amount of energy compared to a hdd. So lowering the hdd (swap) usage saves a bit of energy.
Quite surprised they didn't even mention undervolting the cpu, this realy save a lot of energy (and heat).

99.99% of laptop users don't fool around with BIOS :)

I'd rather get a second battery if you really can't find a power outlet within miles:D :Like a 16-hour flight in economy class.

find me a laptop which allows vcore control:)

You guys gotta be kidding, undervolting any Intel laptop CPU is easily done from windows and can be fully handled by software. I gained over 30 minutes battery life by undervolting my Pentium M to 0.7v and locking it to 800MHz when not on AC power.

I use notebook hardware control found here http://www.pbus-167.com/ Any Intel CPU uses Speedstep, and that is what this software does. You can change the multiplier and lock it depending on load, ac/battery power, or 24/7 use as long as the system supports Speedstep. Same with voltages. It supports auto-profile selection for many different power state profiles.

AMD users may be out of luck, I'm not entirely sure. But any Intel CPU laptop with Speedstep can be underclocked and undervolted with this software. It does not overclock anything however.

not talking about Speedstep:)

That's pretty much standard on level of power setting in today's laptop. High performance, balanced or power saver; even with AMD. That is what mobile processors are all about :)

Neither was I. :-p Speedstep doesn't undervolt the CPU to 0.700v, it'll default to a much higher voltage even at 800Mhz. The application exploits Speedstep's ability to configure voltage and CPU multipliers on the fly and lets you pick any combination you please for any situation.

I was talking about undervolting like this :D

Thank you for the info :) Only laptops I've used for more than 4 hours are a Compaq Celeron 2Ghz and IBM Pentium 4 1.5Ghz; neither one required me to look into lowering power usage, as I was using them hooked up to power outlet 100% of the time.

The software shows no difference in setting than what my laptop already provided. For the dual core T2060 lowest CPU voltage is 1.025 remains unchanged.

I believe what it does is to lower the 1.215 volt at highest multi (cpu default) and see if it runs stable. So, if any battery saving, it is at high performance defeating the purpose.

The power saving is over the whole range of multipliers, but it's greatest at max speed. Generated heat is a lot lower so the fan needs to run a lot less (= less energy :) ).
Vista can also set the energy level of WiFi cards.
Max. battery life is all about small details :-p

Surely, if I want to stay at Starbuck outdoor in hot summer day for another hour longer because I want to look at the pretty half naked girl sitting next to me, either I switch the laptop at power saving mode and careless about high power setting at lower CPU volt ;)
There is no need for max power mode just for browsing the internet. I don't doubt the ability of the software.:)
I was able to use mine for about 4 hours as is. However, I am not quite sure lowering 0.05 volt on every step of multi will benefit much since the lowest CPU volt remains unchanged in my case.

Testing and looking for lowest CPU voltage high performance setting. Will post some photos later.

:ws: Convinced
Lower to 1.1 from 1.215, >9%

Exactly. :)

Speedstep has lower voltage settings available that it does not use, but NHC will allow the user to select. In this way it will work on any Intel Speedstep or Enhanced Speedstep capable CPU, regardless of laptop brand.

Pentium M 2.13MHz

Default
16x @ 1.356v ~73c
6x @ 0.998v

Modified
16x @ 1.180v ~56c
6x @ 0.700v ~35c

I had to re create my NHC profile, so I just retested the above. Huge difference in battery life & temps, not to mention the fans are again silent. :)

Notebook hardware control is a great tool to undervolt your CPU :)
Ask me...