Laptop Battery Maintenance and optimization _ Hardware Maintenance

The forum has been a lot of friends asked about laptop power-saving and battery maintenance problems, this site Technical Forum general moderator Lael recently published a paper in digital magazine dedicated to this issue, the article detailed in-depth, is a rare masterpiece, in this particular published for everyone to see, Hope to have this need of friends help! --by Mango

"Mobility" is one of the most important features of a laptop that distinguishes it from a desktop computer. It is precisely because of this feature, so that the laptop battery inadvertently assume the role of maintaining the image of the task. A laptop that lacks long battery power is unlikely to take up long hours of mobile office. And the lack of battery power to help the notebook computer, its "Anytime,anywhere" advantage is also not talk about.

At present, many laptop users are still only in the initial stage of battery use, how to protect the battery and reasonable use of batteries are not known. Every time these users complain about the battery is too short or battery life is not long at the same time is not the first to carefully look for the reasons for their usual use? Of course, the causes of these two problems do not exclude the quality of the battery itself, but in the vast majority of cases, improper use of human is a very common situation.

Many people think that the laptop battery is based on the life expectancy, but in fact, the decisive factor should be the total charge and discharge times. This is not a special case for laptops, as with all rechargeable batteries. In normal circumstances, currently widely used in notebook computer lithium-ion batteries for about 400 times the filling life; Ni-MH batteries have a long life span and can be filled thousands of times, but because of the strong electrical memory effect, so although in the lifetime of better than lithium-ion batteries, but in terms of their day-to-day use of the state, Ni-MH batteries are not much better than lithium-ion batteries.

Like our human life and death, the battery is gradually aging and eventually die. Therefore, the correct use and maintenance of the battery is particularly important.

Generally the new machine's batteries will be recharged in a certain amount of electricity for use at the test, so when you take the machine home after the first need to drain this part of the electricity and then charge work. And each charge in the future to ensure that the remaining power in the battery as far as possible to be consumed clean before the next.

If you need to keep the battery on hold for a long time, so to ensure that there is a certain amount of electricity in the battery, each manufacturer on the exact amount of residual electricity is different, but I suggest that everyone is still full of electricity after saving as well; In addition, the battery that does not use for a long period of one months at least one deep discharge and charge is also a must , the aim is to prevent battery ions from losing their electrical activity for a long time without being used, causing them to recharge again.

When the computer uses the environment power supply is stable, we recommend that you take off the battery and use the power adapter separately. The purpose of this is simply to avoid the battery being recharged frequently in an incomplete discharge. Our environment is impossible to be absolutely insulated, so the battery will also have a natural power consumption even if it is not used, so that the battery will be recharged when it is connected again. This approach to a very strong electrical memory effect of Ni-MH battery damage is very large, although lithium-ion batteries can be almost negligible electrical memory effect, but a long period of incomplete charge and discharge will also reduce the battery life to some extent. Of course, if you use the computer's environment power is very bad, do not do so, and the price of tens of thousands of laptops compared to a battery is relatively cheap, picking the sesame lost melon is not cost-effective.

The battery maintenance is again good, if in the use of the method is not proper, also can not play its due efficiency. The same size of the battery, why in the day-to-day use of the company and the use of promotional time difference so much? This is a problem that many users are puzzled about after buying a computer. There are, of course, some misleading reasons for this publicity, because the figures advertised by the manufacturers are the result of testing in extreme power-saving situations, and our daily use is unlikely to achieve such an environment. Even so, the difference in time will not be much, generally in about 10-25 minutes (only for word processing, web browsing, such as simple operation). Another possibility is that users do some more power-consuming operations, such as watching videos, playing games, and so on.

On the rational use of batteries and optimization methods, we still have to from the notebook computer hardware of their own characteristics of the categories. Before we go, let's start with a simple sort of power consumption for each hardware in a laptop, then "LCD, optical drive, hard disk, central processing unit and memory, other (interface, external devices, etc.)."

1.LCD LCD Screen

Although LCD screens are much more power-saving than CRT monitors, they are really a big spender in the hardware of laptops. One of the factors that are directly related to power consumption is the display brightness and display refresh rate.

A. Display brightness

The brightness of the LCD is entirely from the rear of the screen in the back of the tube, so it can be imagined that the brightness of the lamp will bring the power consumption is absolutely not the same. So if you are using battery power, in the range of visual allow, as far as possible to reduce the brightness of the display can save some energy. This will virtually break the once circulated among users about the screen background adjustment to all Black can reduce LCD power consumption this error. Using All black backgrounds can actually reduce the consumption of the system for those fancy backgrounds, to a certain extent to play the role of energy conservation, but this saves the electricity is negligible, and is not the LCD, because no matter what the background, the LCD brightness is no change.

Again, many users like the use of screen saver in laptops, which may have some protection for CRT display, but for battery-powered laptops, it can be said to be basically useless. And now the screen saver can be said to do more and more fancy, in the running screen protection when the system load is greater, the power consumption will naturally increase. Therefore, it is recommended to leave the computer when you can choose to turn off the LCD, or use the Hibernate function, or even shut down the computer. IBM users are more fortunate to be able to use FN+F3 to close the screen directly:).

B. Show refresh Rate

Many people know that the LCD refresh rate is a non-existent parameter, because the LCD display is not any flicker, the general notebook computer refresh rate is fixed again 60Hz, high profile low is actually useless. But when we do some screen refresh very fast operation, also will increase the power consumption. This explains why when playing video and playing games, the battery will be very fast, in addition to CPU, display cards and other hardware load increase, repeated brush screen action is also a key power consumption factor.

However, unfortunately, this problem is basically no good solution, can only suggest that the use of battery power when trying to watch less video, less play games ... ：（

For IBM laptops, its unique power management software battery Maxmiser can adjust the screen refresh rate of the notebook computer, see the figure below, one of IBM's exclusive functions:

2. Optical drive

Many users believe that the power of the optical drive is mainly due to the emission of the laser head caused. In fact, the laser head of the launch power, although it will consume a certain amount of electricity, but compared to the motor rotation, it is nothing.

Laptop optical Drive In fact, has been in the energy saving a lot of time, what we can feel is that when the CD-ROM disk is idle, the motor will be in a very short period of time from high-speed to low speed and finally stop turning. But reading the disc, the motor will rotate, the motor rotation must be consumed. And the laptop has a problem with the optical drive, that is, when the disk is turned on or inserted into the disc will first hum a few times, this is to consume electricity.

In fact, this problem can be solved. In addition to using as few optical drives as possible when using batteries, a software called Nero Driver speed can be used to reduce the speed of the optical drive.

This is a very good green software, do not need to install to run, in the Nero Driver Speed options can click the "Detect" button to detect the current optical drive support speed files, and can choose the language of the operating interface. From the Language menu we see that this software can support the Simplified Chinese display.

In the operating interface, it is possible to define the reading speed of the optical drive and the rotation time after the disk is stopped, and also to define the running mode of the software in detail.

Also, if your optical drive supports DMA transfer mode, it's important to remember to turn this feature on in Device Manager instead of using PIO mode. This can effectively reduce the CPU share, so as to achieve the role of energy saving.

3. Hard Drive

Similar to the optical drive, the rotation of the motor is also one of the factors of power consumption, the other hard disk's head to seek a path when the movement will also bring the corresponding power consumption.

Notebook computer hard disk of an energy-saving design is a certain period of time when the user stops the hard drive to read and write operations, the head will automatically return to the position, the motor into idling state, but this design weakness is the hard disk head will be found at any time since the detection of the use of hard disk. Every mechanical movement of the head will bring a certain amount of power consumption, so it is necessary to set up the idle shutdown time of the hard disk in the management program.

If your laptop is using an IBM Travelstar hard drive, then you can use a software called Powerbooster to achieve energy-saving operation of the hard drive, the interface of this software is very simple, you just need to move the "minimum power consumption" and "maximum performance" between the block.

Also choose the newer models as much as possible, because they can support higher transmission rate standards, but this also requires motherboard chipset support. At present, it is generally possible to see hard drives are supported DMA/66 and DMA/100 standards, although for the speed of the general only 4200 rpm laptop hard disk, dma/100 in the transmission rate of the role is basically unable to show, because the internal transmission speed of the hard disk is not up to. But in terms of effectively reducing CPU share, it does have a big effect.

4. Central processing Unit and memory

The two parts are put together because of the obvious mutual restraint between the two hardware. When the CPU speed of the computer is relatively high, memory is more hours, is actually the CPU waiting for memory, and when the CPU speed is relatively low, memory is very large, there is memory waiting for the CPU situation. In either case, the system will increase its own operating load, but also not conducive to energy conservation.

A Cpu

First, try to choose a laptop that uses a mobile CPU, because the mobile CPU is designed to save energy for laptops. The Intel SpeedStep feature, which is known to us, is one of the features that Intel formally added to the mobile CPU since the P3-600mhz processor, which allows the CPU to automatically reduce the clock frequency when using battery power, thereby saving energy. (Mobile Celeron processors do not have this feature)

Intel SpeedStep Program:

If you are using the Windows 98/me/2000 operating system, you can download and install the SpeedStep program to the Intel Web site, the CPU clock frequency can be defined in the program interface, the user can specify the frequency grade of CPU running according to the use. Power management programs for branded laptops, such as Ibm,sony, also provide similar functionality, although also based on Intel SpeedStep, but are much more detailed and provide a rich pattern of energy-saving themes to meet different usage requirements. Although this program is already embedded in Windows XP, it is regrettable that it does not provide a manual definition of the program, which automatically adjusts the power management scheme to a laptop energy-saving solution by default when the system is installed, which is why many users feel the installation of Windows One of the reasons the computer slows down after the XP system.

If you choose this, your processor will not run at full speed in any way:

You can only choose this:

Toshiba notebook computer Power Management Program

In addition, if you choose the Pentium 3 processor laptop, try to choose the Pentium 3-m processor with the. 13 Micron Figure Latin Kernel, because the new generation of processors is much better in terms of power savings and performance than the Pentium 3 of the old. 18 Micron Copper Core.

B. Memory

Many people think that DDR memory consumes more power than normal SDRAM memory, which is wrong, because they ignore

The number of laptops using DDR memory is much more power-hungry than the Pentium 4 and Nvida Geforce (ATI Radeon) display card, which is naturally less likely to consume power. But in terms of memory itself, DDR is more power-saving than SDRAM, because the working voltage of the DDR memory is 2.5v, while the normal SDRAM memory is 3.3v.

Of course, the working voltage is impossible for us to change, and we can only change the amount of memory. According to the needs of the system to choose the right size of the memory is very important, otherwise it will appear because the memory is too small, causing the system to read a lot of hard disk as a virtual memory space, it is natural to increase the power consumption.

The following are the memory-recommended scenarios for each operating system:

Windows >=64m

Windows Me >=128m

Windows 2K >=192m

Windows XP >=256m

5. Other (interface, external equipment, etc.)

The Usb,pcmcia we use are electrically charged interfaces, so it is necessary to consume electricity. and depending on the external devices used different power consumption will be different, such as mobile hard disk power consumption is larger than the external mouse.

There is only one solution, and that is to use the batteries as little as possible, unless you have to use them. You must remember to remove the device after use, because although the device stops working, the interface also consumes a certain amount of power in order to maintain the communication status of the device with the computer.

For some of the interfaces that we hardly need, consider turning it off temporarily, noting that the device is not deactivated in the device properties of the hardware manager, but is going to disable in the CMOS settings. For example, we are familiar with the infrared interface, it will automatically open and then scan around the presence of infrared devices, which will also power consumption.

Finally, one suggestion is to use the latest operating system as much as possible with the hardware configuration, because they are much better than previous operating systems in terms of energy-saving design. In addition, a reasonable combination of Windows power management programs or notebook computer manufacturers specifically designed power management programs, energy savings are very helpful.

Windows Power Management Program

Although the above optimization operation can not prolong the service life of the battery, it is feasible to extend the battery's use time as far as possible, so as to maximize the efficiency of the battery. After the above operation, the battery may extend the use of about 10-15 minutes, sound seems to think that the role of optimization is not so obvious, but do not underestimate this short more than 10 minutes, perhaps it is at the most critical moment in the computer important information of the life-saving straw. Protect the battery does not mean to worry about or without the battery, in the reasonable operation of the premise of the courage to use it, let it better for our work to play the effectiveness is the most critical.

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