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Thursday, March 23, 2006
Ng: Power options
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
One of the enduring myths in technology that I myself tend to disbelieve is related to how we treat our cell phone and notebook batteries.
In the late 80sand early 90s, rechargeable batteries that power our devices were made of NiCd or nickel cadmium. These batteries supposedly have what you would call a “memory” effect.
The best way to use this kind of battery and ensure that it lasts long is to drain it before recharging it. If you don’t use up its power and charge it, this may not last as long as expected.
The memory effect refers to an internal counter that counts the number of times you charge it. And the more times you charge it without using it up, the shorter its life gets.
However, today’s batteries are not only lighter and last longer, they are now made of lithium ion. These lithium ion batteries no longer have a “memory” effect, which means recharging them even when they are not drained does not compromise or shorten their life. Of course, manufacturers still advise the owner to drain the battery once in a while before charging.
Talking about notebook computers, one of the best ways to make a notebook more productive is to understand better its power options. In notebooks that run on Windows XP, you will be able access power options by clicking on control panel.
Once there, you will note that there are three options on how to turn your notebook off. The first is “standby.” This just sort of switch off the computer and the monitor, but the unit still consumes power because it is maintaining your data in the memory.
You choose standby if you want to turn on your computer in an instant without having to reboot, which may take a few minutes.
If you are running on batteries only, you may find out that if you chose standby and forgot about it, you run out of power after some time.
The second power option is “hibernate,” which is an increasingly popular option, especially for notebook computers and even for desktops. What hibernate does is that it will write whatever is on the memory into the hard disk. Thus, if you have a 512-megabyte (mb) memory, it will write whatever is on the memory unto a 512 mb file. The advantage of this, is that the next time you turn on the computer, you don’t have to load Windows or the applications anymore. It will load whatever is in that file back to memory. This means boot-up time is faster.
The last power option is shutdown, which will close all files and turn off the machine. The next time you turn it on, it will now read the startup instructions and the registry and try to load the configuration files one by one into memory before it can fully function. These normally take the most time in shutting down, as well as starting up.
However, the advantage is that it will eliminate bad behaving programs from memory and insure that your computer is properly loaded up without any excess programs that may have been improperly shut down or had disengaged themselves from memory.
It is good to use hibernate because it is faster, and once or twice a week, also totally shut down the computer.
One of the things notebook users need to take time to configure is the PowerOptions/Advanced Options tab. Here they can configure what happens when the lid of computer is closed and when the “sleep” or “off” button is pressed.
My computer is configured in such a way that when I shut the lid, it will automatically put my computer into hibernate. So when I am done, all I do is close the lid. It is really convenient.
However, I once used somebody else’s computer which was configured differently. After using it, I just closed the lid. Unfortunately, her computer was configured to go on standby when the lid is closed. So when I returned the unit to her, her battery was drained after a few hours!
A little caveat: A little attention to the power options will mean that you can optimally use your notebook computer and make it last longer.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 23, 2006 issue)
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