Laptop battery life

[rpeAMP]

I am going on a bus trip this next week and I am taking some Divx movies along the way to watch in the bus on the way. Would the battery on my laptop last longer if I moved the files to the hard drive or just ran them from the CD? I want to get the most efficiency out of the battery as I can. I also heard that having PC cards in the computer will drain the battery even if not being used. Is this true? Also, any other tips on saving battery juice?

Thanks in advance!

 

[WildeBeast]

yes, the cdrom motor is far less efficient, definately place it on the HD!

 

[rpeAMP]

Thanks for the info. I did a trial run today with it in the CD-ROM drive and the battery only lasted about half of what it should last. I'll try it the other way and see what happens.

Any other comments?

 

[WildeBeast]

yeah, get another battery. they aren't usually over $70. What is the model of your laptop?

 

[rpeAMP]

It's a Sony PCG-F430, with 2 battery support. Batteries run around $249.95 because they're Lithium Ion or whatever. This one lasted me for roughly a year and I bought another one to use at the same time.

 

[WildeBeast]

I guess that buying another battery is ruled out. That is crazy for Li-ion, my dell model's runs $70, and I thought that that was a lot!

 

[rpeAMP]

How long does your battery last? In my BatteryScope software, it says when at a full charge, I should get 2.17 hours out of each battery. I have to guess that that is wrong because I don't get near that much (only around an hour) unless I am only typing something. Strange......

 

[WildeBeast]

My 8 cell on my c600 lasts about 3.5

 

[rpeAMP]

Wow. It's weird on mine....now I'm down to like 1% but it's been on forever at 1%. Maybe I need to discharge it and recharge it and then it will work right.

 

[WildeBeast]

I have never actually been below 10%. what happens when it actually runs out of space? It is probably like fuel tanks, when it says empty it actually has about 1.5 gallons left.

 

[rpeAMP]

Well I have just figured a few things out here that might help. I have an Infrared port that was never turned off so I'm sure that drained it quickly. Also, I have a PC card and I think that those drain quickly. I also should probably get rid of every program in the system tray that I'm not using....maybe this will help. We'll see.

 

[WildeBeast]

Actually unless your CPU has special power saving technology behind it, I doubt that it matters how many programs you are using, unless they are accessing the harddrive that is

 

[rpeAMP]

Ok, I'll look into how many programs are actually using the hd. Also, I think that I can throttle back my processor...I might look into going to 50% or so when listening to MP3s.

 

[ElFenix]

i was quite interested in this topic myself, but now i've had my answer, thanks!

 

[WildeBeast]

Actually the screen is using much more power. can that be turned off when listening to MP3's? that would save mucho power!

 

[rpeAMP]

Yes I think I can actually turn the screen off with this PowerPanel program that I have. I'll try that.