Random Computer Bits

Interestingly enough, most laptop users rarely get even close to the advertised battery life on their laptops. Apple advertises 6 hours for their MacBooks; in real life use it only gets around 2-3 hours. Why this discrepancy? Part of it is due to using way too many things that you don't need. Here are some tips for gaining optimal battery life without dropping a few hundred dollars on an extra battery.

Calibrate your battery.

If you want to make your battery last as long as possible, perhaps you should try to make your battery hold as much power as possible in the first place. Apple recommends calibrating your battery once a month; you're supposed to do it even more if you don't run off your battery a lot. The process of calibrating your battery is actually quite simple: you charge up the battery, unplug it and let it sit for a few hours. Then, run down your battery until the MacBook puts itself to sleep, and finally, wait a few more hours before charging it back up again. Completing this process will ensure that your battery is charged up as full as possible.

Don't use too many applications.

Probably the first (and most obvious) thing you should do to conserve your battery consumption is to reduce the number of applications you're using at the same time. Many require loads of RAM, and if your system's RAM is all used up, it will use your hard drive as a form of virtual memory. The more this happens, the more power is used to spin up the hard drive, and the more power is used up from your precious battery. So only run the most essential applications if you wish to stretch your battery's length.

Turn off Airport.

If you're not using your built-in wireless, Airport, you should turn it off as it uses power even when not connected to any networks. If the Airport icon is on the menu bar, you can enable it from there by clicking it and choosing "Turn Airport Off" (duh). If it's not on your menubar, you'll have to open up Internet Connect (it's in your Applications folder), switch to the Airport tab, and hit the "Turn Airport Off" button.

Turn off Bluetooth.

Another thing that uses power when you're not using it, and should be turned off to preserve your battery life: Bluetooth. If it's on your menubar like Airport should have been, just click the icon, and hit "Turn Bluetooth Off". If for some reason you've disabled the menubar icon, head over to the Apple System Preferences, choose the Bluetooth preference pane, and there should be a large "Turn Bluetooth Off" button.

Turn down screen brightness.

Not much to say about this one. If you're in a darker environment, you won't need all the screen brightness that Mac laptops provide you with. Turn down the brightness with the dedicated buttons on your keyboard.

Change battery scheme to 'better battery life'.

When you stop using your laptop for a few minutes, you'll probably want your Mac to turn off the screen and hard drive to save power. Make it do so more quickly by going to your menubar, and beneath the battery icon, choose "Better Battery Life". (Again, if this isn't on your menubar, you can access it from System Preferences->Energy Saver.)

Disable dual core processing.

If you've got one of the new Intel Macs, you're probably aware of the fact that they contain Intel Core [2] Duos processors, which means that your Mac has essentially two processors inside of one. While this is a nice feature for speeding up processing tasks, the extra core consumes more power. You can save more power by disabling the second core. And while this does decrease your computing power, you probably won't even notice it if you're only running 1 or 2 applications.

Open up the System Preferences, and open up the Processor pane, Click the check box beside "CPU2" to disable it. For some strange reason, the second core is always re-enabled whenever the Mac is restarted or woken up from Sleep. So you may want to make the task of disabling the second processor core a little bit easier by hitting the "Show control in menu bar" option in the Processor pane. You can then control how many processors are enabled right from the top of your screen.

Stop using hard drive-intensive applications.

Try, whenever possible, to avoid the use of hard drive-intensive applications. A program like iTunes may seem like a relatively easy program for the computer to run, and the processor doesn't have to work very hard. However, the program requires constant disk access to play the song files, and this eats up your precious battery far quicker than you think. Something like Microsoft Word or TextEdit uses almost no battery power because it runs mainly from the RAM.

Choose a good location.

Where you decide to use your laptop also plays a small factor in determining how long your battery charge is going to last. If you look closely at the bottom of your Mac laptop, you'll notice little "feet" near the corners. These raise up the laptop to allow airflow underneath the laptop. If you use your laptop on your lap or another soft surface, beware: the bottom of the laptop is not exposed, and very little air can get underneath the machine to cool it down. When this happens, your laptop warms up, and the fan is required to stay on longer to cool everything down, using your precious battery juice. Whenever you use your Mac laptop for extended periods of time, use it on a flat surface where air can flow underneath it. It's not just saving battery power, you're also making your laptop's life a little bit longer.