LinuxMonk » Laptops

Tips to Increase Laptop Battery Life

Rosario — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:32:36 +0000

Dont always use the laptop with in A/C power. Switch off the adapter when the battery is fully charged (use it in battery mode) and switch on the adapter again when the battery level goes very low.
Keep your WIFI radio switch always off when not required.
Drain your battery completely at least twice a month. (Make the laptop get shutdown automatically when the battery is critically low, switch it on again and keep in BIOS page some time to drain it completely, till it gets switched off).
Unplug un-used devices connected via USB (like camera, joystick, external keyboard, mobile, external hard disk etc) when not required.
Avoid using StandBy/Sleep option rather use Hibernate option.
Use the right adapter to charge your laptop battery.
Temperature is a silent killer, temperature reduces the life of battery for all electronic devices (even mobile phones). Take measure to avoid over heating of your laptop. (People who play high graphics games rather keeping your laptop in a flat surface leave a gap between your laptop and the surface).
Use your LCD screen with low brightness as possible.
Do not pack the laptop in your carry case as soon as you shut down. Give a little time to cool.
Other less significant tips are, avoid using high graphics screen savers, reduce the start up process as much as possible, delete the unwanted back ground process, use power options in the operating system efficiently.

All the above tips, I have put with my own experience. Generally lithium ion batteries have a life of 2-3 years. People who use there laptops for more hours a day, take little care to have a good battery life. If no care the battery wont last more than a year.

How to partition harddrive in your new laptops without removing your Vista?

Rosario — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:25:46 +0000

Most of the laptop brands you purchase comes with only a single partition(or only with C drive) and few partions like Recovery, which is not for our use. Most people think of Partition Magic softwares or Boot CDs. Your choice are right but you cannot be sure, whether the preinstalled Vista will be safe. Most case, your partitioning ends in total formatting of the harddrive. Is there any way to partition the laptops, without formatting or removing vista or recovery. The answer is here.

Put the Ubuntu Live CD in the CD drive and boot in the Live cd mode. Goto Bios settings, change boot priority to cd drive, and put the cd in drive save and restart. In the live cd mode, use the menu System->Administrator->PartionEditor(Gparted) or in the terminal $sudo gparted to open the GParted software.

In a system there can be only 4 Primary partions and each Primary partions have few good number of Secondary partions. In the Gparted software you will get a good picture of your harddrive. Locate the C Drive in the list, Right Click and select Resize/Move. Now you can find the used portion of the C Drive being yellow shaded. Click and drag your left end pointer as you wish to allocate your C Drive. (Not less than the used portion). Now the C Drive will be reduced leaving a free memory. Now right click and select New option.

If you have already, three primary partions, create the fouth partion as extended to have some partition as you require as extended. Have look at the picture you will get a clear picture. Since for installing Linux, you wil require swap, home partion, etc and so only four primary partions will not be enough.