Mike Antoniak wrote a helpful article for the National Assoc. of REALTORS® Web site. As mobile professionals, nothing is more enoying than having your laptop's screen turn black and power down in the middle of entering a listing or instant messaging a client. Below is the tips that Mike Antoniak has listed to prevent this from happening to you the next time you are 3/4 done from activating that listing.
A battery drain could translate into a missed call, unanswered e-mails, or photos that can’t be snapped on schedule. Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to extend the life of your batteries and prevent unforeseen drains from becoming disasters. Here’s how.
1. Know your battery’s limits. How old is your battery? If you’ve had your electronics for a while, it may be time for a new battery. Over time, all batteries lose their ability to hold a charge. If the battery’s getting old, you may need a replacement. Turn to the original equipment vendor first and remember that quality matters. Some aftermarket batteries have caused problems. If it’s a no-name brand offered at an unbelievable bargain online, it might not be a long-lasting battery.
2. Turn down the screen. The brighter the screen, the more power your gadget is consuming. Turn off the camera monitor between snapping photos. With a computer or phone, learn how to control the screen’s brightness and turn the backlight off. Whenever possible, move to a darker corner or the shade where you won’t need the screen at full brightness.
3. Minimize multitasking. To economize your use of power on computers and smart phones, don’t overburden your processor. Rather than open and run several programs simultaneously, concentrate on one chore at a time as much as possible. Even when an application is open in the background and not in use, the processor requires a little more power.
4. Disable wireless. Switch off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth until you need them. Otherwise, your hardware is pointlessly searching for a connection you won’t use, reducing available power for other functions.
5. Unplug peripherals. Any peripherals powered through a USB port tax battery life. Restrict use until you can plug into AC or DC power.
6. Prioritize your needs. Make selective use of your hardware to conserve power. Your smart phone may also be an MP3 or video player, but those functions will cut into talk or Web time. You can watch DVDs on your laptop, but when you’re finished, you likely won’t have much battery life left for anything else.
7. Install your applications. Avoid using your laptop’s optical DVD/CD-ROM drive as much as possible when you’re not able to plug your laptop in. The motor and moving parts drain battery life. It’s better to work from the drive than disc.
8. Increase the RAM. The more RAM you have, the less work your processor has to do to find and manage data resources. It will improve performance and overall efficiency.
9. Let your laptop sleep. Set the sleep mode to launch after a shorter duration of inactivity, and choose the sleep mode over the screen saver mode to conserve power.
10. Shop for efficiency. Next time you're in the market for new hardware, consider battery life as a compelling feature. Step up to a better battery, and buy a backup. Consider migrating to the emerging class of hardware that runs on flash drives and flash memory. With no moving parts, these devices make more efficient use of power, reducing overall size and weight in the process.
11. Charge properly. Effective power management begins with knowing the proper maintenance and procedures. Learn how to properly manage the battery recharge cycle. On some types of batteries, it is possible to over-charge. For example, with older NiCad or NiMH batteries it’s important to completely drain the battery between recharges. On the other hand, with the newer lithium-based batteries, that’s not an issue.
12. Have a solid backup plan. There will still come a time when you suddenly find you’ve run out of juice. Common sense says you should buy the rechargeable with the longest life from the outset, and also invest in and carry a fully charged backup. For highly compact handheld devices, one way to make sure a portable power source is always at hand is to buy products that can run off AA or triple AA batteries, or invest in an alternate backup power source that runs on them.
While these are all wonderful tips another solution to prevent from having to re-enter everything due to a dead battery is to create a Hardware Profile. This enables the user to "program" the computer to behave differently when mobile as it does when connected through the power supply. Examples of settings include dimming the screen, configuring the computer to display for best performance rather than for best appearance, turning off applications that run in the background freeing up the CPU and using less resources. Microsoft has a great tutorial on creating profiles for your laptop for when "docked" and whrn "NOT". Follow these steps and you are sure to get less black screens or power-downs in the middle of doing a task.
A battery drain could translate into a missed call, unanswered e-mails, or photos that can’t be snapped on schedule. Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to extend the life of your batteries and prevent unforeseen drains from becoming disasters. Here’s how.
1. Know your battery’s limits. How old is your battery? If you’ve had your electronics for a while, it may be time for a new battery. Over time, all batteries lose their ability to hold a charge. If the battery’s getting old, you may need a replacement. Turn to the original equipment vendor first and remember that quality matters. Some aftermarket batteries have caused problems. If it’s a no-name brand offered at an unbelievable bargain online, it might not be a long-lasting battery.
2. Turn down the screen. The brighter the screen, the more power your gadget is consuming. Turn off the camera monitor between snapping photos. With a computer or phone, learn how to control the screen’s brightness and turn the backlight off. Whenever possible, move to a darker corner or the shade where you won’t need the screen at full brightness.
3. Minimize multitasking. To economize your use of power on computers and smart phones, don’t overburden your processor. Rather than open and run several programs simultaneously, concentrate on one chore at a time as much as possible. Even when an application is open in the background and not in use, the processor requires a little more power.
4. Disable wireless. Switch off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth until you need them. Otherwise, your hardware is pointlessly searching for a connection you won’t use, reducing available power for other functions.
5. Unplug peripherals. Any peripherals powered through a USB port tax battery life. Restrict use until you can plug into AC or DC power.
6. Prioritize your needs. Make selective use of your hardware to conserve power. Your smart phone may also be an MP3 or video player, but those functions will cut into talk or Web time. You can watch DVDs on your laptop, but when you’re finished, you likely won’t have much battery life left for anything else.
7. Install your applications. Avoid using your laptop’s optical DVD/CD-ROM drive as much as possible when you’re not able to plug your laptop in. The motor and moving parts drain battery life. It’s better to work from the drive than disc.
8. Increase the RAM. The more RAM you have, the less work your processor has to do to find and manage data resources. It will improve performance and overall efficiency.
9. Let your laptop sleep. Set the sleep mode to launch after a shorter duration of inactivity, and choose the sleep mode over the screen saver mode to conserve power.
10. Shop for efficiency. Next time you're in the market for new hardware, consider battery life as a compelling feature. Step up to a better battery, and buy a backup. Consider migrating to the emerging class of hardware that runs on flash drives and flash memory. With no moving parts, these devices make more efficient use of power, reducing overall size and weight in the process.
11. Charge properly. Effective power management begins with knowing the proper maintenance and procedures. Learn how to properly manage the battery recharge cycle. On some types of batteries, it is possible to over-charge. For example, with older NiCad or NiMH batteries it’s important to completely drain the battery between recharges. On the other hand, with the newer lithium-based batteries, that’s not an issue.
12. Have a solid backup plan. There will still come a time when you suddenly find you’ve run out of juice. Common sense says you should buy the rechargeable with the longest life from the outset, and also invest in and carry a fully charged backup. For highly compact handheld devices, one way to make sure a portable power source is always at hand is to buy products that can run off AA or triple AA batteries, or invest in an alternate backup power source that runs on them.
While these are all wonderful tips another solution to prevent from having to re-enter everything due to a dead battery is to create a Hardware Profile. This enables the user to "program" the computer to behave differently when mobile as it does when connected through the power supply. Examples of settings include dimming the screen, configuring the computer to display for best performance rather than for best appearance, turning off applications that run in the background freeing up the CPU and using less resources. Microsoft has a great tutorial on creating profiles for your laptop for when "docked" and whrn "NOT". Follow these steps and you are sure to get less black screens or power-downs in the middle of doing a task.
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