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.

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.

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)?

[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.

[pedrokost → byoung2]

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?