

Ask HN: How do you increase your laptop battery life - pedrokost

I have recently bought a new laptop, but it has a very low battery life when unplugged: about 2hours.<p>I have tried to increase it by closing some background applications, removing Windows Aero, but I have to do it manually every time I unplug the laptop.<p>Closing the background processes one by one takes time, is there no application for doing it in once click (by preselecting which processes I want to stop)?
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byoung2
Right click on the battery icon and go to Power Options. Under "Select a Power
Plan" you'll see which plan you have selected (e.g. Recommended, Power Saver,
High Performance). Click "Change Plan Settings" and then "Change Advanced
Power Settings" under the battery column to get to a menu that lets you change
everything that affects power. Turn WiFi to power saving mode if you have a
strong signal. Turn USB to selective suspend if you don't have anything
plugged in. PCI Express to maximum power savings. I leave the processor at
100%, but you can change this to 75% or lower if you're just browsing. Just
keep an eye on the number of programs running. Search and Indexing shoule be
set to power saving (windows can organize your MP3 collection for faster
searches later). I set my display to the minimum when on battery, and turn it
up manually if it's too dim.

Once you have all of these settings tweaked, the computer will automatically
use them whenever it's on batteries alone, and revert when you're plugged in.

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pedrokost
Thanks, I did it.

But I do have software (e.g. Memeo AutoSync, UltraMon, Phone Remote Control,
Airytech Switch Odd) that I wish to shutdown automatically when on battery
power, as I don't necessarily need it then, and they use some CPU power.

However closing each separately takes some time and work (+later I have to
restart them when I plug in), is there no software that can manage that? No
software developer got this idea?

