This is especially important in conditions of permanent power outages.
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Russia is launching missile strikes against critical infrastructure facilities in Ukraine, so Ukrainians are used to working and studying in conditions of constant blackouts .
Read also: How much money should be kept in cash in case of a blackout: the banker gave a formula for calculation
Expert of the School of Digital Security DSS380 Pavlo Belousov told what can be done to make the laptop work longer from the battery, Souspilne writes.
Take care of the battery
If the laptop is used as a stationary computer and is connected to the mains all the time, its battery has most likely “adapted” work just like that. By design, the battery should be discharged and charged all the time, then it will hold a charge for a longer time without connecting to a power supply.
If you've been keeping your device charged all the time, or if it's not a new laptop, the battery may have exhausted all the charge cycles and discharged very quickly. Therefore, the expert advises to buy a new one – it will hold a charge longer.
Remove restrictions
Some laptops have charging settings to save the battery: they limit charging to 80% to extend the “life” of the battery. During the blackout period, you can turn off such settings so that the battery is charged to the maximum. And then, when everything is in order, you can return this setting for the “health” of the battery. If you charge the battery to 100% for three months, it will not significantly affect the battery condition.
Replace the hard disk
Instead of the traditional HDD recommend to choose a more energy-efficient SSD, because of this the laptop will consume less energy in the process of reading and writing to the hard disk, which in general will allow the laptop to work longer on the battery.
Change settings< /h2>
If the processor is more modern, you can see its settings. It is possible to adapt the speed of operation and, accordingly, the consumption of electricity to certain tasks. That is, for example, if you work with something simple, then it is not 100%, but 5-10%. And by default, it is set to work at full capacity. You can limit this percentage in the settings, then the battery will last longer. This also applies to video cards. You can also turn off additional devices, such as a Bluetooth mouse, speaker, and others.
Clean
Better cooling of the device and, as a result, longer battery life will also be helped by replacing the thermal paste (if necessary) and cleaning it from dust.
Turn off unnecessary radio modules: Bluetooth and wi- fi
When you have the radio module active, it is constantly searching for networks. For example, if you do not have the Internet and you are just working on a laptop, this module should be turned off, because it works: it searches for networks, does not find them, tries to scan them, and this consumes electricity. It won't give you an hour of work, but such small adjustments will help you save somewhere a minute, somewhere five – so it's worth doing.
Change screen settings and keyboard backlight
Reduce the brightness of the screen and turn off the color adaptation function (and similar: smooth collapse of windows, for example, various audio and visual effects – they consume additional battery power) and the keyboard backlight. And in general, return the screen settings to the basic ones, turn on the dark (“night”) theme. According to him, this technique will not work as an energy-saving device on all devices – it all depends on the screen technology, but it will not be superfluous.
Or it is easier to do: create a profile in Windows with your own personalized settings, in which it will all be set up already. Call it “blackout”, relatively speaking. There, all these effects will be disabled.
Disable everything unnecessary
Enable the airplane mode, switch the battery operation to the economical consumption mode. Also, review the programs running in the background and turn off the ones you don't really need.
Related video
Is Kyiv ready for one of the most difficult winters? What about ensuring the survivability of critical infrastructure in the event of a prolonged blackout? Read about it in the article by Oleksandr Sergienko, director of the Analytical Research Center “Institute of the City”, “Blackout – how to survive in a big city?” on ZN.UA.
