Electricity Usage on Laptop

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Carbon_Fibre

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Hi

Can anyone help me with this?

If I reduce the brightness of the screen and speed of the processor on my laptop when it's plugged in, does it use less electricity?

It's a Acer Travelmate so it has a nice tool to adjust the settings, essentially to save battery life. Obviously now, the laptop is plugged in, but will it use less? Trying to be green.
 
I would think it would use less, the laptop isn't continuously charging, it charges full to 100% then run's on battery to 98% and then charges again, so the longer that 2% holds the more green you'll be.
 
Was thinking that. Just need to be sure. I use my laptop to download stuff over the weekend, that's all it's doing.
 
Yes, it will use less power when you use the Acer utility to set it. Personally I just keep mine set to save as much energy as possible; saves me from having to set it every time. If you want to save even more electricity, set the laptop to "Do nothing" when you close the lid and leave a small gap between the lid and the keyboard. This will turn off the LCD only.
 
You might want to keep it to 5 or 10 minutes. It uses less than a lightbulb in any case, so 2 extra minutes won't make a huge difference.
 
Yes, will reduce elec.

If its a modern CPU then it'll clock lower automatically if not under load.

Screen brightness yes too. But only if you are actually using it. If its just d/ling then it should shut down the screen after a few mins anyway so no savings there.

Also, the Acers don't need a tool to lower screen brightness, its built into hardware/firmware. Hold in FN key and then look (blue) icon on your keyboard that looks like this http://www.kyffhauser.co.za/Sun logo.gif Should be near the arrow keys. That and the other similar looking one inc/dec screen brightness.

Another potential elec saving is to switch off the HDD. This is a bit tricky/hardcore though. To do that you'd need the OS to be on something else. Like a flash or booting of a network drive. It would probably also have to be linux.
 
Since the battery lasts longer at these settings, it must use less power; and since energy can't be created or destroyed it must use less electricity when plugged in.
 
Carbon_Fibre said:
:confused: WHY?
Click to expand...
Yeah, you're probably right. Just remember that the screen needs a minute or so to get to the desired brightness after being off for a while. I tend to leave my desk for about 4 minutes at a time, so that's why I recommended 5 minutes :). For maximum power savings 3 minutes is perfect.
 
Carbon_Fibre said:
Hi

Can anyone help me with this?

If I reduce the brightness of the screen and speed of the processor on my laptop when it's plugged in, does it use less electricity?

It's a Acer Travelmate so it has a nice tool to adjust the settings, essentially to save battery life. Obviously now, the laptop is plugged in, but will it use less? Trying to be green.
Click to expand...

I have a sneaky suspicion it won't make a difference to mains power consumption through the power chord...
 
antowan said:
I have a sneaky suspicion it won't make a difference to mains power consumption through the power chord...
Click to expand...

Turning the lcd off and clocking the cpu lower will result in lower power usage whether on mains or battery.
 
It will be much lower...like the desktop, the unit only draws what it needs.

Letting the screen go off and just downloading will use p1ss electricity.

Just touch the charger when your laptop is idling for 20min, then play a game for 10min and try again...charger is hotter when you play games coz the laptop is drawing more power then.
 
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