How to use notebook battery skillfully

Use rechargeable batteries

Using rechargeable batteries is one of the advantages of laptops relative to desktops, which can be used in a wide range of environments with laptops. The first battery to be released was Ni-CD battery (NiCd), but this kind of battery has "the memory effect", each charge must discharge before, the use is very inconvenient, soon was replaced by Ni-MH battery (NiMH), NiMH not only has not "the memory effect", moreover each unit weight may mention 10 the electricity quantity. The most commonly used battery is lithium-ion battery (Li-ion), it also has no "memory effect", compared with NIMH, each unit weight can obtain more electricity, the price is also higher than NIMH. Under the same weight, these three kinds of batteries use more time than 1:1.2:1.9.

Currently, laptops use three kinds of batteries: 1 Ni-cr batteries, 2 Ni-MH batteries, 3 lithium batteries; they are generally expressed as: Ni-cd ni-cd, Ni-mh ni-mh, Lithium li.

In the purchase or replacement of notebook batteries, for many users, "batteries" may be unfamiliar. First of all, it is stated that the battery and batteries are two concepts. A battery is made up of several small units that are slightly larger than the thumb, cylindrical, CA. 7, 8 cm high, and voltage 3.6v. They are the batteries, just like a small battery, after a series of combination, is that we see the battery. Next, how to tell how the battery is a few cores:

One way: Unplug the battery to see the number of contacts, a few are several cores. But this is the "Minister" approach. Let's take a look at how "Cao Chong" is "like": Look at how much of your battery is nominal V, such as 14.4v, then divide by 3.6 to get 4, which proves to be a 4-section battery in tandem. Then look at the size of the entire battery, such as 3800mAh, to prove that there are two groups mentioned in the series of batteries, because those small battery capacity for 1500-2000mah, or even more, must be two groups to reach 3800mAh. Based on these two judgments, the battery is 4x2=8-core.

Composition of Notebook batteries

The notebook battery consists of a shell, a circuit board and an electric core, which belongs to a lithium-ion battery. Generally speaking, the electric core refers to the number of batteries inside the battery, mah refers to the capacity of the notebook battery.

The circuit board is mainly composed of protection circuit (or two protection circuit) and two parts of capacity indicating circuit to manage the charge and discharge of notebook battery and safety.

The standby time of the notebook battery is mainly determined by the mah value. In general, the more the number of cores, the greater the mah value, the longer the standby time. Notebook battery life is mainly measured by the number of charge and discharge, the quality of qualified products generally 500-600 times. Therefore, the effective use of notebook batteries within 2 years, expired batteries will be aging, standby time dropped sharply and affect the mobility of notebook computers.

Tips for using Notebook batteries

In fact, how to use a good notebook battery battery, how to prolong its use of time and the life of the use of the problem, is undoubtedly puzzling in the vast number of notebook computer users in the heart of a problem, laptop battery use methods and skills have a variety of, which requires us to use in peacetime more learning and application

(i) Fast into hibernation

Temporarily do not use notebook computer, in order to save battery energy, we can set up power management scheme, so that the system into hibernation after a period of time, but this or long or short to wait a few minutes, there is no way to make notebook computer system immediately into hibernation?

An easy way to get the laptop system into hibernation quickly is to close the display directly. Press the display screen is just a lift, you can make the notebook computer immediately into hibernation, effectively save battery energy. When you need to use it again, just open the display and the system will automatically return to the state before the operation.

(b) Screen power-saving mode

The TFT screen is the most power-consuming component in the notebook computer, in order to use the battery to reduce its consumption of electricity, notebook manufacturers each out of the resorting, but generally used to reduce the brightness of the screen, or even the way to close the screen.

In some notebook computer power management settings can customize the brightness of the screen, most laptops can adjust the brightness of the screen through specific shortcut keys, generally have a 6~8 level of brightness adjustment.

(iii) Energy-saving settings

Desktop computers use AC power, most people do not attach importance to the energy-saving functions of the computer, but for laptops that need to be powered by batteries, the use of energy-saving functions should be taken seriously. How computer hardware is designed to be more energy-efficient is not a problem that users need to solve. What the user can do is to use the Energy saving option effectively on the computer settings.

Energy-saving settings in two places require the user to adjust: First, in the computer's BIOS setup program has about energy-saving settings; Most importantly, there are many energy-saving settings and operations in the operating system. In the actual implementation of the microcomputer system, the energy saving setting in the Windows system should take precedence over the setting in the CMOS.

1. Energy-saving settings in the BIOS

In CMOS settings, there is mostly a "power savings", where you can select multiple options such as "Maximum Battery Life" and "Maximum performance". "Maximum Battery Life" is the default energy-saving mode setting. There are several states of the laptop's energy saving mode, such as idle mode idle mode, Standby mode standby (wait) pattern, Suspend mode suspend (Hibernate) pattern. These settings on laptops are able to adjust the power consumption, mainly in the computer into the energy-saving state, the timely closure of some unnecessary use of the system equipment. If in the waiting state, turn off the monitor and hard disk, after entering the hibernation state, in addition to turn off the monitor and hard drive, can also save the contents of memory to the hard disk, the entire computer system basically maintain shutdown state, once activated or restart the computer, the desktop will be accurately restored to the state before hibernation In the CMOS energy-saving settings, mainly set by idle mode into the Standby mode of the Standby timeout time, set by Standby mode into the Suspend mode suspend timeout time. The majority of laptops use Phoenix BIOS. Different BIOS energy saving settings may be different and you should read the ScreenTip carefully.

2. Energy-saving settings in Windows

For the average user, saving energy management in a Windows system can be more straightforward. In the Windows Help file, under the Manage hardware and software entry, there are two things that are related to energy saving for laptops: Manage energy consumption and manage power on a portable computer in use portable computers. You should read these before you make Windows Energy saving settings.

In Windows Control Panel, click Power Management to open the Power Management Properties dialog box. In the Power Management Properties dialog box, you should set the power scheme to portable/laptop and reasonably schedule options such as System wait, turn off monitor, turn off hard disk, and so on. Different computers can manipulate the options there are some differences, the new factory computer and the latest software will have more operational options, detailed settings should be based on the computer itself and Windows Help files.

In addition, if your laptop has a built-in infrared port, you can extend your laptop battery time by banning it when you are not using it.

(iv) Alarm settings

Setting up the battery alarm function can prompt the user to save the information in time. The method is to click on the "Control Panel", double-click the "Power" option, click the "Alarm" menu bar, "Battery Alarm" column Windows 98 defaults to 10%, "Critical Battery Alert" column Windows 98 defaults to 3%, you can make appropriate changes as necessary. Click on both the [Alert Response] button to select both "Sound Alerts" and "Display Messages", "power level" is not optional. When the battery is used to the alarm limit, it automatically jumps out of a warning window and the buzzer beeps to prompt the user to save the information in a timely manner. Finally click on the [OK] button to exit the power management settings.

(v) Open Energy saving function

As we've described in "extending the use of laptop battery technology", the energy-saving feature is a CPU-used technology that allows the best balance between the performance of a laptop and the time it uses for its battery.

Most of the new laptops in the BIOS are supported by the CPU's energy-saving technology, which is turned on by default, and if not turned on, just enter the BIOS to open the support option OK.

(vi) Use of third party software to monitor battery usage status

In addition to the power management features built into Windows, there are a number of tools that can monitor the battery's use status. For example, PowerCenter is a power monitoring tool that can be downloaded for free (http://me mbers.xoom.com/timothybug/powercenter/index.htm). Only 800KB, is a software designed for laptops. PowerCenter displays the actual available time, in addition to the percentage of the battery.

There are 3 ways to display PowerCenter.

(1) Fulldisplay: Displays details in the open window, including battery or alternating current, percentage of battery remaining, and time available for use.

(2) Compactdisplay: Always appear at the top of the window in use.

(3) Minimizedisplay: Makes PowerCenter smaller in the taskbar of Windows and displays relatively simple information.

PowerCenter also has a control center that can make up to 6 warning tips. When the battery-down to a certain degree, timely warning to the user, save the file being processed. In order not to waste power and CPU resources, PowerCenter automatically detect the changes in battery status.

(vii) Deliberate battery

Light the battery regularly to make sure it is fully charged. If you need to completely use the power in your battery, do this: In the Power Management dialog box, select Battery Drain, which sets all three running on batteries options to never. So the notebook is the computer will continue to run. Select the mode, and then go to the Alarms tab and remove the checkmark for the low battery and critical battery warning check boxes (this will not go into a paused state when the battery is out of power). Next, let the computer run a lot of CPU-intensive tasks, such as a computer running some computationally complex 3D demo programs, so that you can quickly run out of the remaining power in the battery, but do not forget to unplug the AC plug when doing these disposal.