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General discussion

Getting the most out of your battery

Jun 23, 2005 6:46AM PDT

I recently got a gaming laptop, but have found that I have a short battery life. I have an interest in using it for simpler tasks (word processing, more or less) for longer periods of time. Is there any way I would be able to tune down, in a manner of speaking, my performance (or any other ways) to get a longer lasting battery?

Discussion is locked

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System Specs
Jun 23, 2005 7:08AM PDT

I have...

Compaq Presario x6000
lithium ion 12 cell battery
windows xp home sp2
pentium 4 2.8ghz processer
512 ram
17" widescreen
ati mobility radeon x600 video card

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not easy...
Jun 23, 2005 11:28AM PDT

- Reduce CPU cycles to *HALF*
- dim down your lcd to the max you can TOLERATE
- Defrag entire system, then delete page file
and recreate on separate partition that is not
where OS resides.
- move XP core system file(s) and kernal access
from swapfile to *RAM ONLY* via reg tweak
(google for it!)
- keep fan speed to 'quiet' via control panel power
or bios.
- make HDD spin down after 5 mins or download
util to force spindown at any given time
- TURN OFF ALL AUXILIARY port and drives via
power icon in control panel or device manager
(ie. powerdown cdrom, card reader port and
anything you dont need for your purpose.


You will need to see which combination of
the above will affect your gaming. Most likely
your 50% CPU will make thing choppy but you
never know once your try.

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How do I...
Jun 23, 2005 6:00PM PDT

reduce cpu cycles to half?

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Use the Panel...
Jun 24, 2005 10:01AM PDT

Control Panel; Power Options; and then
power scheme. Your laptop manufacture
may have their own power setup and generally
speaking, when you force quiet fan mode, you
reduce cpu cycles by half. Some more advanced
setups in XP pro, allow adaptive cpu control.
This means as the need arises, the cpu is stepped
up.