In our new column, Geek’s Quad, we offer expert tech advice every college student can use. No computer science major required.
Much to the disappointment of many professors, the majority of Northwestern students bring their laptops to class these days. Taking neat digital notes and having the internet as a resource are wonderful advantages over old-fashioned notebooks. Unfortunately, most laptops can only pull two or three hours of work. If you’ve ever had three straight classes in powerless lecture rooms (or if you’ve forgotten to charge your laptop before class) you’ve probably watched your computer click off mid-lecture. As a victim of the five-hour class block with a two-hour laptop battery, I found a lot of useful steps that every student can follow to make it through the day.
1. Ride the brightness
Every laptop has an adjustable brightness switch that allows it to turn the backlight on the screen up or down. The light that illuminates the screen is actually one of the biggest drains on the battery and needs to be treated as such. Always keep brightness at a minimum (making sure you can still see). In personal trials, I found about a 25-minute difference in battery life between running at full brightness and minimum brightness. Also, don’t be afraid to jockey the switch periodically. It can be very helpful to cut the lighting to zero during a long stretch of lecture that you just don’t think requires note taking. It happens. If you are pretty certain you’ll have such a grace period, you can also try putting it to sleep.
2. Put it to sleep
Your computer undoubtedly has a sleep mode or hibernate function that puts the laptop on standby, saving your work so that it will pop right back up once you wake the thing up again. This is especially important when power is low since sleep mode (Mac) or standby (PC) uses almost no power at all — just a touch to keep the RAM ticking.
3. Less wireless
Wireless internet reception takes a lot of battery life — several watts per day. Arguably the most efficient thing you could do to save power would be to keep the WiFi off whenever possible. Same goes for Bluetooth, which you may not even use unless you’re zapping pictures of Lolcats to your neighbors in class, so make sure that’s off at all times.
4. Close things
This may seem like a no-brainer, but every program the computer is running will take up energy. Start with the obvious and close anything you aren’t using. Major programs like Photoshop or iTunes (it happens) are a major drain on power, and even Word and Firefox are large programs. Once that is out of the way, check your dock or start bar and look out carefully for anything you didn’t know was running. It’s easy to minimize a program and forget about it, so you never know when Skype and iPhoto are trucking away somewhere out of view. Another good way to get even more specific…
5. Monitor
Any psych professor will tell you that people act differently when they can closely monitor what they are doing. You’ll focus a lot more on fuel economy when your Prius is displaying all the minute details about your engine and battery. The same goes for the computer. Download a monitor program such as iStat or Informer — free widgets that tell you what’s going on in your computer. You can see how much memory each process is using and act accordingly. Also, these programs will tell you your battery’s health level, which is the most important statistic of all. And if you have really poor health…
6. Buy a new battery
Nothing lasts forever, and laptop batteries are no exception. In fact, they are generally expected to be operating at about 80 percent after one or two years. If you find that you’re getting poor mileage, you may have to bite the bullet and get a replacement battery for about $80-$130 depending on the manufacturer. Before you buy one, make sure to call your PC manufacturer’s customer service or visit the Apple Store if it’s a Mac. If your battery is in poor health and the computer is new, under warranty or if they are feeling friendly, you may get a new one for free.
7. Keep it plugged in
Whenever you can use an outlet, such as in the dorms, keep the laptop plugged in. Battery life is measured in cycles — each time you drain and refill the battery cells, it ticks off as one cycle. The more cycles you go through, the more likely you are to wear out the health, meaning that the battery capacity will gradually decrease. If you keep it fully charged and plugged in when possible, the computer will draw electricity straight from the charger and won’t wear out the battery. Don’t get too anal about this one, but it is useful to know.
And, if all else fails:
8. Get a Macbook Pro
All of the new Macbooks have built-in batteries with 7-9 hours of battery life. Those things are crazy. If you can’t afford to go Mac, read carefully into the specs of any new laptop and see how many cells the battery has, as well as the expected life. Just be careful to avoid the B.S. of “up to X hours” and only use that figure in relation to other computers to see if it is above or below average.