Who doesn’t maange more from their gadgets these days? Phones packed in with compasses, GPSs and more memory than my childhood PCs, laptops with shockingly bright displays and tons of processing grunt, and cameras with large LCD touch displays. And what takes the hit in all of this? Yes, you guessed it — battery life. And while battery technology is getting better over the years — they are more durable and don’t have the “battery memory” effect anymore — it’ll take nothing less than a mini-Nobel-worthy innovation before batteries can get significantly better. Much like our own money, it’s pretty much up to us to make our batteries stretch and do that much more!

Laptops

This one’s the easiest one to start with, what with the complex power-saving mechanisms already built into most modern operating systems. Most optimise battery performance by targeting typical battery hogs, such as the processor, screen and hard drive. When you’re on battery, select the Power Scheme that will cut power to these parts the moment your computer is idle (in Windows, Control Panel > Power Options, or choose your vendor’s custom program). Even during use, dimming the laptop’s screen will save power, and if you don’t need to see what’s happening, you can turn the backlight off completely, ideal for when you’re waiting for a download to complete etc.

And if you need more juice, consider not using the optical (CD/DVD) drive. If you can, watch movies stored on your hard disk rather than popping in the DVD. Also, keep an eye on unnecessary programs and features (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) and devices (like USB mice, thumb drives) and deactivate/remove them — the benefits are significant. It goes without saying — don’t run processor-intensive tasks such as graphics-intensive games when you’re on the battery.

And finally, give the battery some rest — if you’re working on a UPS and don’t expect to carry the laptop around too much for a while, remove the battery first. Else, you’re just wearing it out, constantly charging and discharging it, when you don’t need to use it at all. Also, keeping the battery plugged in all the time heats it up, and has a negative effect on its performance.

Phones

Image courtesy Apple

Dread that low-battery beep before the only link between you and the rest of your family dies an untimely death, don’t you? Phones are a toughie — what with them constantly searching for networks and pulling your email down. So when you’re out and about — especially when you’re on holiday and nowhere near a charging point — reduce the frequency with which your phone polls the server to check your email. As with your laptop, turn off your phone’s Bluetooth when you aren’t using a wireless headset, and use Wi-Fi sparingly. If you’re not using an application like an Instant Messaging client, consider switching it off rather than multi-tasking.

Other preventable phone-battery-hogs — the vibrate function and the speakerphone. If your phone supports it, set it to auto-dim the screen based on ambient light. And if you’re really dead serious about making your cellphone battery lasts longer, you may even want to consider changing networks if your current service provider doesn’t serve up a good signal at your home/office. Where’s number portability when you need it?

MP3 players

If longevity is paramount, choose a MP3 player that stores your songs on flash memory, instead of battery-consuming hard drives. It’s simple — hard-drive-based players, while serving up higher capacities, also have more moving parts, which translates into reduced battery life. Most players also come with a backlight timer, which controls how long a screen backlight is on after the last button is pressed — reducing this number will reduce battery consumption. If you can, use playlists to decide the order of the songs beforehand — each time you press a button, the screen lights up and the processor comes into play.

Cameras

Most cameras these days come with a vibration-reduction or image-stabilisation function, and while these are great for low light shots, they’re pretty much useless if you’re shooting out in bright daylight. Except, and you know where I’m headed with this — they consume battery like nobody’s business. Cutting back on your use of the camera flash and autofocus will also allow you to take more photos between charges. You can instead play around with your camera’s light sensitivity settings (ISO) — a bonus is that these also make for very interesting images.

But by far, the biggest battery hog is the camera’s LCD screen. Resist the urge to use the use the LCD to compose your shots, and reviewing them several times later on the screen. Do it on the computer instead — it also allows you to see colours and details no LCD can show you!

For just about any gadget, including the ones we just looked at, some basic rules always hold good. Avoid extreme temperatures — either too hot or too cold — both limit the capabilities of the battery significantly. Keep them in use, at least once a month, and if you foresee not using them for a while, if you’re going out of town perhaps, store batteries in a cool dry place! And in some cases, downloading the latest firmware from the manufacturer’s Web site can provide better battery management, so give that a shot if you can.

Milk made

If you’re eyeing that jug of milk, wondering if it’s still safe to drink after you left it out in the kitchen overnight, the Cravendale Jug can take the guesswork out of the equation. With a unique PH sensor built into its base, the jug features a small LCD display on the outside of the jug that changes from ‘Fresh’ to ‘Sour’! Oh, and it sounds an alarm too! I don’t know about you, but this is the first item in my “Kitchen of the Future List”!

• URL: http://www.milkmatters.co.uk/newsroom
/news/2010/03/29/revealed-a-magic-milk-jug/
• Price: TBA