Low battery life is, besides overheating, one of the most annoying things of high end laptops. If you buy a 17" Laptop, you usually end up regretting it once you hit the road. Nearly every middle class latop with such a big screen has one big minus: the uptime. The battery usually ends at the 2 hour mark, and you have to look for a power supply afterwards, or buy a better computer from the start, which is probably out of our budget. So what can we do, if we don't have the money to buy an overly expensive latop with a super battery? We can get ourself an external power supply via USB. Those things are great. There are different types, ranging from the size of a big mp3 player, such as an ipod to pads that have the size of your notebook.
I loved my 17" Laptop, but I was so pissed as it only lasted 2 hours once I was on the road, and especially if you want to go outside when the weather is nice, you are seriously handicapped.
That's why I got myself an external power supply. It gives my laptop a few extra hours, even though I have to carry more weight, which I don't care too much about. I want a bit of more flexiblity so I can enjoy the spring and summer, while I write on a park bench. Probably a 15" laptop would be better for this, or maybe a netbook, but still I am more productive with the extra pixels on my screen than I would be on a small netbook.
So at the end of the day you always have to decide what is important: Horsepower or endurance? Low weight? If you don't want to carry around heavy equipment get a smaller notebook, if you don't mind, simply get some extra batteries that will increase your runtime by the hours.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Fix laptop problems
Owning a laptop for more than 10 years does not make me a pro computer geek, but it sure offered me my fare share of problems. The biggest and most common laptop problem I have been running into is overheating. Since the netbook days you might think that overheating is an issue of the past, but there are still loads of people who want a subsitute for a desktop computer. Once a computer has a certain amount of power, it develops heat.
Laptops are notoriously known for overheating, it's just a built in feature. The small space that has to hold up all the components of the notebook produces a lot of heat. Now the better and bigger your notebook is, for example one of those nifty alienware products, the more dangerous it becomes. There are always the warning signs below a laptop informing you that a laptop should never be placed on your lap. You are not in a strip club recieving a lapdance anyways.
The more heat, the faster your laptop will die. Yep, heat kills your laptop, as it puts a lot stress on your mainboard, gfx card, the memory and what else you can find in there. The best thing you can do is to greatly reduce the heat your notebook produces.
How can you reduce your notebook temperature? First of all, you can reduce the workload you do with your laptop. Which is probably no option for most of us, as we intend to WORK on a laptop, and not sit there and watch an empty desktop.
A great way that helped me give me laptop a few extra months, even though I later learned that 1 of the fans in the laptop broke down, was a notebook cooler.
A notbook cooler is a device, that you place under your notebook. It's usually some cold metal with a few fans transporting the hot air it produces. Now you might think, this is something fancy, I don't need this. I want some easy solution. But there might be none other besides working less with your laptop. It's easy and simple to get a notebook cooler, place your laptop on it, plug it in and see the temperature of your notebook decline.
Once I got myself such a net tool my notebook started working again pretty well, before I was not even able to play the simplest game without my laptop slowing down considerably, after I got myself the cooler I was able to play without problems.
So what can you take from this? Always place your laptop on a hard underground, as those soft and fuzzy surfaces will end up destroying your fans and increasing the heat load on your laptop. In case your laptop already gets to hot and you have performance problems, there is a very big chance, that a laptop cooler will help you prevent further damage and increase your performance.
Laptops are notoriously known for overheating, it's just a built in feature. The small space that has to hold up all the components of the notebook produces a lot of heat. Now the better and bigger your notebook is, for example one of those nifty alienware products, the more dangerous it becomes. There are always the warning signs below a laptop informing you that a laptop should never be placed on your lap. You are not in a strip club recieving a lapdance anyways.
The more heat, the faster your laptop will die. Yep, heat kills your laptop, as it puts a lot stress on your mainboard, gfx card, the memory and what else you can find in there. The best thing you can do is to greatly reduce the heat your notebook produces.
How can you reduce your notebook temperature? First of all, you can reduce the workload you do with your laptop. Which is probably no option for most of us, as we intend to WORK on a laptop, and not sit there and watch an empty desktop.
A great way that helped me give me laptop a few extra months, even though I later learned that 1 of the fans in the laptop broke down, was a notebook cooler.
A notbook cooler is a device, that you place under your notebook. It's usually some cold metal with a few fans transporting the hot air it produces. Now you might think, this is something fancy, I don't need this. I want some easy solution. But there might be none other besides working less with your laptop. It's easy and simple to get a notebook cooler, place your laptop on it, plug it in and see the temperature of your notebook decline.
Once I got myself such a net tool my notebook started working again pretty well, before I was not even able to play the simplest game without my laptop slowing down considerably, after I got myself the cooler I was able to play without problems.
So what can you take from this? Always place your laptop on a hard underground, as those soft and fuzzy surfaces will end up destroying your fans and increasing the heat load on your laptop. In case your laptop already gets to hot and you have performance problems, there is a very big chance, that a laptop cooler will help you prevent further damage and increase your performance.
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