[emceepj]

while i was in literature & composition today, i only had 35% battery life left on my iBook. so, i decided instead of chatting, typing, and surfing the net, i'd try to conserve power so i wouldn't have to switch to scribbling out the rest of my notes.

here's what i did:

go into sys prefs>energy saver> select longest battery life.

turn off un-needed apps.

turn off airport card.

turn speakers to lowest volume or "off"

adjust screen brightness to very dim (just before black screen).

when not using 'book, turn screen off.

i was surprised to see how much power i saved by just turning off the screen when not typing. and so, my little book lasted through-out the class, and i was not forced to write out the rest of the lecture.

does anyone else have some batt-saving tips or tricks?

Phil

 

[Roland]

Buy a second battery...

 

[MacNutt]

Not bad emceepj..I don't have any cool tricks for my powerbook...but just think how much enegy we could all save, if we all tried to minimise our power usasge.

The same way we would, if we were all trying to conserve battery power at the very same time.

Wonder how much energy we could save if we all did that? All at the same time?

It would probably affect our power utilities, in a BIG way. Wonder what would happen if we all did that on an ongoing day-to-day basis?

Boggles the mind...doesn't it?

Nothing is impossible. We just have to all agree that this is what we really want to do. Think about it.

Do any of you see a downside? If so, then tell me. I'm listening. Honest.

 

[parousia]

I'd say that was a bright idea.....

but that would be a waste of energy.

Parousia

 

[MacNutt]

Are we talking brain energy or the type that is derived from burning fossil fuels?

 

[used to be jwoodget]

Macnutt, the power savings would probably be pretty insignificant compared to the huge wastage in other sectors. With LCDs, current laptops are reasonably efficient compared to desktops with their fans and big CRT monitors. But the big wasters (especially in the summer and winter on this side of the continent) are inefficient heaters and air conditioners. Add to that the office lights left on through the night, the air conditioning of large, vacuous spaces and the number of people who sit in their cars with the engine idling and I'd say the potential savings from dimming your screen are not going to make much of an impact on Kyoto.

The absolute worst wasters are the heavy industries (aluminum smelters, etc) which gobble up so much power that they have to be built next to power sources.

When I'm on battery, I always dim the screen to the minimum and turn off Airport. That doubles my power on time. In X, closing the lid and sleepig the powerbook is also effective since it takes about a second to wake-up. I don't usually set the HD to spion down though.

We can all do our bit though.... Although by fixing electricity prices at 4.3 cents a kwh (effectively the same price as 8 years ago), the Ontario government has largely removed the economic incentive to conserve energy (which is part of the reason why Ontario used a record amount of electricity in January).

 

[Kardnal]

On my PowerBook 3400c, I normall just spin the harddrive down and type my notes in BBEdit... I'll spin it up every 15 minutes or so to save the file, and then spin the power back down. Doing this, I routinely get 3-4 hours out of my battery.

Weirdly though, the other day in class I turned the bringhtness down on my monitor (I normally have it set to full) and I actually found it worsened the battery life, cutting it in half... Does anyone know why this would be?

 

[PosterBoy]

Strange that battery life would go down when brightness is turned down. When the little indicator on my machine tells me that the battery is at about 15% I turn the brightness down to where it is as dark as possible while still being useable and can get anywhere from another hour to hour and 30 minutes out of it. When I am not doing much of anything, I turn the screen right off, which saves a lot of power.

--PB