For those who’ve owned a laptop before, they’ll know that over-charging their laptop batteries will render them useless after a year or two, so they would cleverly remove their batteries when they are working at home or in the office. However, after about 18 months later, they still complain to me that their batteries never last at all.

Well, first thing first. Even when you are not using the laptop batteries and just left it sitting somewhere collecting dust, the batteries are still discharging itself and the worst thing is if you do not use the batteries, they tend to fail even faster!! That means, you’ve paid for a battery during the time you buy the laptop, but the battery just gone bad as you never use it! A big irony, I know, but did you know that?

There are many other users who will cleverly share the tips of doing the following:-

1. Dim the laptop screen
2. Minimize background processes
3. Don’t use the CD/DVD drive.
4. Disable the wireless antenna when not in use.

But there’s still a lot you may not know about battery technology and the things that both help and hinder your laptop’s juicebox.

You can fiddle with background processes and other software settings all you want, but your hardware is the biggest factor in battery life. In fact, software such as power-management utilities can help minimize the impact internal components have on battery longevity. Here are a few more ways to optimize hardware for maximum battery output :-

• Turn off ports.
  • Disabling unused ports and components, such as VGA, Ethernet, PCMCIA, USB, and yes, your wireless, too. You can do this through the Device Manager or by configuring a separate hardware profile (see next step).
• Create Power-Saving Hardware Profiles.
  • Configure your laptop for the various scenarios in which you use it (on a plane, at the coffee shop, at the office, and so on). You can do this through the Hardware Profiles menu by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Preferences or by using a freeware utility such as SparkleXP (for Windows XP users).
• Configure the display to turn off when not in use.
  • This is different from just using a screensaver, because in many cases a screensaver still requires the display’s backlight to be on. You can set the interval to turn the display off in Windows’ Power Options—found in the Control Panel.

Extending the Overall Life

The easiest way to give your battery an early death is to damage it. And the two most common causes of damage are from overheating and overloading. Here’s how you prevent overheating:

• Use a cooling pad when using a notebook computer on your lap.
• Avoid propping your laptop on a pillow, blanket, or other soft surface that can heat up.
• Clean your desk. It sounds strange, but if you have a dusty, dirty desk, that dust will get into the vents and clog the cooling fan. Once the dust is inside your laptop, it is much harder to remove. You can try blasting it out with canned air, but you run the risk of damaging internal components. You can also remove the vent and clean out the grit, but remember that taking apart your laptop can void the warranty. So clean your desk at least once a week, if not daily.
• Never store your laptop in a place where the air temperature exceeds 28 degrees Celsius (80 degree Fahrenheit), such as a hot car or an outdoor patio.
• Consider taking your battery out when using your laptop plugged into AC power. Just make sure to keep the contacts clean. If you need to clean them, use rubbing alcohol. Just make sure you use the batteries occasionally in case it’ll go bad even faster.
• For lithium ion batteries, you do not need to discharge them fully and recharge constantly. Since they don’t have the same “memory” as older nickel-metal hydride batteries, it is actually better to discharge a lithium ion only partially before recharging. You need to do a full discharge only about every 30 charges.

Overloading a battery occurs when you use an AC adapter that has a higher wattage than that specified on the laptop (and battery), or if the circuitry of the laptop consistently overcharges the battery. If you’re using a replacement or spare adapter, make sure the wattage matches your laptop’s within the specified voltage range. In the worst-case scenario, overloading can also damage your motherboard.

Picking a Laptop for Maximum Battery Life

If you’re in the market for a new laptop, there are features and components you should consider to get the most mileage from the system’s battery:-

• An ultra-low-voltage processor, such as the Intel Penryn or one from VIA’s line of ULV processors.
• A solid-state storage drive, which requires less power and, since there are no spinning parts, will suffer less wear and tear than a traditional hard drive.
• An LED display. Although pricey, LEDs use much less power than LCD.
• A smaller screen. A smaller screen means a smaller backlight, which will also save on battery drain.
• Don’t skimp on your battery. If you choose the lowest-cost battery you’ll probably get a battery that degrades quickly, and you’ll end up buying a replacement too soon anyway. So spend the money now to save expense and frustration down the road.
• Don’t buy an expired battery. A good indicator of a battery’s performance is how far into its product life it is, whether it’s used or new. If possible, look at the bottom of the battery and find the manufacture date.

Bluetooth, Firewire, Wi-Fi, Kensington Slot and so forth.

…if you are not into I.T. itself, you will not be interested to know what the technology mean…

They just sound too geeky and seriously, if you are not into I.T. itself, you will not be interested to know what the technology mean, you just need it to work, and that’s it. We understand, and we want to “ease your pain” for your next purchasing with us, so, right here, right now, I’m going to decipher these geeky acronyms for you and hopefully you can understand them better.

Bluetooth Technology

• for wirelessly transferring data short distances (up to 30 feet) among notebooks, cell phones, Palm or Pocket PC handhelds, and printers.
• available on many notebooks.
• not a competitor to wireless Ethernet.
• comes with most notebook computer

DVD-Rom/CDRW Combo Drives

• Slowly being phased out but you’ll still find it in some budget and business notebooks.
• reads DVDs and CDs and writes CDs.

Dual Layer, Dual Format DVD RW Drives

• Adding writeable DVD is extremely cost effective these days.
• Virtually all consumer laptops will have some kind of DVD writing capability.
• Dual format writes both mi-nus(DVD RW) and plus(DVD+RW) discs at a maximum capacity of 4.7GB.
• Dual Layer adds another layer on top of the disc to give it a total capacity of 8.5GB.

Docking station

• A cradle for your notebook that provides space for extra drives and attachment ports for all your cables.
• Popular in business, but are losing favor to port replicators among individuals.
  • Replicators typically don’t have any expansion bays.

ExpressCard Slot

• Already replacing PC Card slots as a feature for expandability.
• Supports two form factors:-
  • ExpressCard/34 (34 mm wide) and
  • ExpressCard/54 (54 mm wide, in an L-shape).
• Currently, there are very few ExpressCard devices out there that can take advantage of the faster bus speeds.

FireWire

• A high-speed connector (capable of 400 Mbps).
• Universal on Macs, common on media-oriented PCs for transfers from digital video (DV) cameras.
• USB is used for virtually all other high-speed data transfers on PC notebooks.

Kensington slot

• A universal connector for a physical security lock, named after the company that invented the feature.
• virtually every notebook security lock you can buy fits the Kensington-style slot.

Key pitch

• Distance from the center of one key to the next.
• Desktop keyboards have a 19mm (0.75 inches) pitch.
• Full size notebook keyboards have a 97 percent (18.5mm) pitch.
• To check key pitch, measure across 10 keys (from the left side of the Q key to the left side of the left bracket ([) key).

Modular Bay

• A cavity in a notebook used primarily for removable drives, but also for accessories.
• A two-bay notebook has an internal bay for the hard drive and a second bay for a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, floppy disk drive, or a spare battery.

PC Card slot

• A space in a notebook where you can insert credit card-size accessories such as modems, network adapters, wireless network adapters, security cards, and memory cards, as well as connection points for some external disk drives.
• PC Cards are slowly becoming legacy ports as they are being replaced by ExpressCards.

Pointing device

• A built-in substitute for the mouse—
  • either a touch pad or a pointing stick that looks like a pencil eraser stuck below the G and H keys.
• Some notebooks have both types.

Port replicator

• A hardware device that attaches to a notebook and connects all the cables (modem, printer, power, and mouse) that you would otherwise attach one by one to your notebook’s ports.
• simpler than a docking station and cheaper.
• Most replicators include a security locking slot.

Travel weight

• The total weight of a notebook package for computing on the road, including the notebook, transformer, battery, and possibly an adapter module for connecting accessories.
• Marketing literature usually quotes system weight (computer, battery, and usually the internal optical drive).
• Add 0.75 pounds for the transformer and 0.5 pounds for the optical drive if it wasn’t quoted by the manufacturer.

Universal Serial Bus (USB)

• An all-purpose input/output connector that lets you attach a digital camera, audio player, memory key, mouse, external drive, or printer.
• A notebook has one to four USB ports (two are adequate for most users).
• All notebooks sold today use USB 2.0, capable of 480 Mbps.

Widescreen

• An LCD display with a width-to-height ratio of 16 to 10 (sometimes 16:9) instead of the more common 4:3.
• better for watching movies, but total size (square inches) is about the same.

Wi-Fi

• Short for wireless fidelity, an umbrella term for wireless Ethernet.
  • 802.11b, capable of 11 Mbps theoretical speed (about 5 Mbps actual), is most common.
  • 802.11g, capable of 54 Mbps, is succeeding (and in-corporates) 802.11b.
  • Some corporations prefer 802.11a, also 54 Mbps. It is possible for a wireless card to integrate both g (with b) and a.
  • Virtually every notebook incorporates wired Ethernet; many include wireless, too.

XGA (Extended Graphics Array)

• One of the two most common screen resolutions for notebooks and desktops:1,024 pixels horizontally by 768 vertically.
• Equally common is SXGA+ (1,400 by 1,050).
• Other resolutions are SXGA (1,280 by 1,024, used more on desktops than notebooks), and
• UXGA (1,600 by 1,200).
• The higher resolutions make for crisp graphics and small text.
• Widescreen displays typically use WXGA (1280 by 768), WSXGA+ (1680 by 1050), and WUXGA (1920 by 1200).