How do I keep my laptop’s battery in good health?

You’ve probably heard some people say you should drain your battery completely before charging it, or that you should keep it between 40% and 80% all the time to make it last longer.

Most of these rules are outdated, applying to older nickel-based batteries. Luckily, most or all of your gadgets these days run on Lithium Ion batteries, which are easy to take care of.

They last longer when you perform shallow discharges, keep them cool, and don’t leave them plugged in while they’re running at 100%. Honestly, though, batteries have a finite life no matter what, and your efforts will only go so far—so don’t stress about it.

Focus your efforts on getting better battery life out of your phone or laptop on a given charge instead—and knowing how to replace the battery when it starts dying.

Carry a Battery Backup

Increasingly, though, the former is just not an option. Laptops with a removable battery, nowadays, tend to be fleet-oriented business machines, and in these cases, the simplest option is a second battery. (Indeed, this can be a good reason to opt for one of these machines even if you’re not a typical business buyer.) Spares can be ordered directly from the manufacturer (we don’t recommend buying third-party batteries), often for less than $100. Simply swap the old battery for the new one once in a while when charging, and bring along the charged-up spare whenever you expect to be away from a power outlet for an extended period.

Another, similar option is to buy an external power pack. While it is also technically a battery, these external power sources plug in to your laptop the same way your charger does. They generally cost between $100 and $200, but come with adapters for use with many different laptop models. They can be used on more than one system, and even for other devices, such as your phone or tablet.

These strategies will help you make the most of the battery you have. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, however, and battery runtime is one of your key concerns, check out our roundup of the laptops we’ve tested with the best battery life.

Simplify Your Workflow: Closing Apps, and Using Airplane Mode

On the other hand, if you’re writing a novel or playing a local video file and don’t need to be distracted by notifications, it’s fine to enable Battery Saver. It’s a good habit to adjust your laptop use in more battery-conserving ways, such as by sticking to one app at a time and closing everything else when you’re not using it. It’s a bit like turning off the lights when a room is vacant. If you’re going back and forth between the kitchen and the pantry all the time, or between Firefox and Word, by all means keep both sets of lights and apps on and open. But if you’re just cooking or watching a YouTube video, you’ll be best served by turning off and closing everything else.

In addition to aiming to single-task, consider enabling Airplane mode in Windows, or turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in macOS if you know you’ll be editing a document with no need for web access. In addition to eliminating distractions, Airplane mode eliminates a significant source of battery drain: not only the wireless radios themselves, but also the background apps and processes that constantly use them, such as updaters and push notifications.

Use Battery Settings on macOS

Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro laptops don’t have a battery slider, although many of the same settings described above are present in the Energy Saver preferences.

To open it, click on the Spotlight magnifying-glass icon in the upper right corner of the screen, search for Energy Saver, and then click on the Battery tab. If you want to approximate the Windows Better Battery or Battery Saver modes, make sure that the options “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” and “Slightly dim the display while on battery power” are checked, and the option “Enable Power Nap while on battery power” is unchecked. (With Power Nap enabled and your MacBook asleep, the machine will wake up now and then to check for updates. Disabling it keeps your MacBook fully asleep when it is asleep—until you choose wake it up.) On recent MacBook Pro laptops, the display brightness adjusts to 75 percent when you unplug the computer from power if you have “Slightly dim the display while on battery power” enabled.

So, if you want the best battery life, should you use Battery Saver all the time? Not exactly. Because Battery Saver mode disables some useful features, you might want to use it only when your battery is below 20 percent and a power outlet isn’t near. Likewise, turning off Power Nap can mean it will take longer to catch up on notifications you’ve missed while you’re away from your MacBook. That’s why most users should use the Better Battery setting and enable Power Nap most of the time.

Use the Windows Battery Performance Slider

The first stop on our battery-life betterment tour is the Windows battery performance slider, a recent addition to Windows 10. It aims to group all of the settings that affect battery life into a few easy-to-understand categories. The company that made your PC determines exactly which settings the battery slider controls. But in general, keep these guidelines in mind:

  • The Best Performance mode is for people willing to trade off battery runtime to gain performance and responsiveness. In this mode, Windows won’t stop apps running in the background from consuming a lot of power.
  • The Better Performance setting limits resources for background apps, but it otherwise prioritizes power over efficiency.
  • Better Battery mode delivers longer battery life than the default settings on previous versions of Windows. (It’s actually labeled “Recommended” on many PCs.)
  • Battery Saver mode, a slider choice that will appear only when your PC is unplugged, reduces the display brightness by 30 percent, prevents Windows update downloads, stops the Mail app from syncing, and suspends most background apps.

Perfect Battery Life Estimates Are Impossible

Battery life is always hard to estimate. Even while you’re using a laptop, Windows might go from saying you have five hours left to only two hours depending on what you’re doing. That’s because performing more demanding activities on your laptop increases power consumption. A laptop won’t use much power while it’s just playing hardware-accelerated video on low brightness but increase the brightness level, and it’ll draw more power. If you start a demanding task that requires CPU power, it will draw even more power. That’s the real problem. Laptop battery life varies dramatically depending on what you’re doing. Manufacturers have decided to take the most unrealistic number they can find, but there’s no single battery life estimate that would work for everyone. However, a battery life test that simulates normal web browsing would be much more accurate and useful for most people.

Video Playback Uses Less Power Than Other Tasks

Constant video playback isn’t representative of regular use. Who is going to sit down with a laptop and watch 16 hours of non-stop video without doing anything else?

Manufacturers don’t care whether this represents your experience or not. They use this benchmark because it produces the longest battery life.

Modern laptops (and smartphones) use hardware-accelerated video decoding. The laptop has special hardware in its graphics processor unit (GPU) that efficiently decodes the video while using as little power as possible, keeping CPU usage down. For example, when you play an MP4 video—even if it’s on a website or in an app—this kicks into gear and saves you power.

This is a great feature. It helps save battery life and keeps your laptop (or smartphone) running cool while you watch videos. However, manufacturers abuse it by using this number to boast about battery life. Anything else—whether it’s browsing a single website or just writing a document in Microsoft Word—will use more battery power than playing videos.

PC manufacturers often benchmark battery life using Windows 10’s included Movies & TV app, which is always set up to use the PC’s hardware acceleration, if available. This feature is not available in every video player, and may not always be enabled by default if it is.

Intel’s Upcoming 5G Modem May End Up in iPhones in 2020

Intel has moved up the launch date for its new 5G modem chip, which means it could end up in next-generation iPhones, but not until 2020.

On Monday, the company said the Intel XMM 8160 modem will start shipping to tech vendors in the second half of 2019, about six months earlier than previously scheduled. But despite the new rollout date, the XMM 8160 won’t arrive in commercial devices until the first half of 2020, the company added.

 

Intel’s modem will offer download speeds of up to 6 gigabits per second, making it about three to six times faster than current LTE modems found in many smartphones. It’s a good bet that Apple will use the new modem. The company has been favoring Intel’s radio technology at a time when Apple is locked in a legal battle over stolen trade secrets with Qualcomm, another provider of 5G modem tech.

Last week, Fast Company reported that Apple was planning on releasing a 5G iPhone in 2020, using what it called an Intel “8161 modem chip.”

The 2020 arrival date may be a little disappointing, given that the first 5G mobile networks will start going live across the US next year. Intel’s competitor, Qualcomm, is seeking to capitalize on this with its own 5G modem, the X50, which is slated to land in smartphones during the first half of 2019.

Qualcomm’s X50 supports up to 5 gigabit per second speed and can be easily paired with the company’s Snapdragon mobile processer chips. Vendors including HTC, OnePlus, and ZTE say they plan on using the X50 modem in upcoming products.

Microsoft Makes a 4G LTE Version of the Surface Go

Microsoft’s Surface Go is getting a 4G LTE model that’s available for pre-order today.

The new model will cost $679 for consumers and $729 for business customers. It’ll officially go on sale in the US and Canada on Nov 20. Another 21 markets will get the device on Nov. 22.

The LTE model is configured with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. A 256GB version is also available for business customers at $829, making it the priciest Surface Go configuration you can get.

The high costs for the new unit may seem a little much, given that you can simply tether the standard version of the tablet with your smartphone’s portable hotspot. But in a blog post, Microsoft said the new LTE model will be ideal for business workers, who are often out on the field and need quick access to the internet.

The LTE model also weighs a little more than the Wi-Fi version; it adds 0.02 pounds for a total weight at 1.17 pounds. Microsoft says the device’s battery life can last up to 8.5 hours on a single charge, or about thirty minutes less than the standard model.

In July, Microsoft introduced the Surface Go, which starts at $399, as an attempt to offer an affordable 10-inch Windows tablet. In contrast, the Surface Pro 6 starts at $899.

2018 MacBook Air hands-on measurement: talk about the six advantages of the upgrade

Since its debut 10 years ago, the MacBook Air has been popular with users. Even if other brands of laptops have been upgraded, Apple has never removed many of its products.

I still remember that four years ago, Xiaobian was friends with Amway Apple MacBook Air (2014 version) this laptop, nowadays, at this moment, Xiaobian is also using it, the device is very smooth and clear. I like it more.

Every year, Apple brings its new MacBook Air laptop. At the Apple conference on the evening of October 30th, Apple introduced the product called “the most environmentally friendly” in history – 2018 MacBook Air . How is environmental protection? It is reported that this notebook is made of 100% recycled aluminum alloy material, and is also equipped with Intel’s eighth-generation i5 processor.

What are the upgrades to the new MacBook Air? A reporter from Forbes magazine conducted a preliminary assessment.

 

Display upgrade to IPS

The latest MacBook Air is equipped with a 2560×1600 resolution display, which is consistent with other notebooks. In addition, the display has also been changed from the previous 1440 × 900 TN screen to IPS, IPS images have higher stability and close to sRGB 100% color, the visual feeling is significantly higher than the old models.

 

Lightweight and easy to carry

The new laptop body is also made of aluminum. And compared to the old MacBook Air, the weight is reduced by 100g, the weight of 1.25kg and the thickness of 15.6mm is suitable for those who value portability, but the above does not represent the thinnest standard of the current notebook. Further, weight and thickness are critical to the performance of the hardware.

 

Color matching options

The new MacBook Air laptop comes in three colors to choose from, silver, space gray, and new gold.

 

Very good connectivity

The new MacBook Air interface has been replaced with a USB Type-C that supports charging and data connectivity. The two USB Type-Cs on the left support lightning 3, and the 3.5mm interface is reserved on the right, but the SDXC card slot is removed.

Under the shallow design, Apple also replaced the butterfly keyboard and the Force Touch trackpad. Unfortunately, there is no Touch Bar above the keyboard. The foreign media said that it is difficult to show the honor.

 

Long battery life

Apple previously said that the new MacBook Air’s 50.3Wh battery can continue to access the Internet for 12 hours. Apple’s power is that their laptop’s actual battery life is likely to be much higher than the nominal battery life. Need to pay attention, the old MacBook Air battery capacity is 54Wh battery, um, right, low-power processor is a meritorious service in this regard.

 

Super T2 coprocessor

The new MacBook Air also uses Apple’s T2 coprocessor, which was created to handle hardware performance not available with Intel CPUs, including Hey Siri, FaceTime image processing, hardware video encoding, Touch ID security zones, and more. At the same time, the T2 coprocessor also includes impressive high-speed SSD reading and writing. Due to the deep customization of hardware and functions, the T2 design is actually much simpler, and it may also prepare Apple for the development of independent chips.

In short, the new generation of MacBook Air has been upgraded and upgraded in terms of value, performance, battery life and even interface. The price/performance ratio is also the highest. Therefore, friends who have been watching silently can start.