The Best Programs to Use on Laptops to Save Battery Power
Battery life has always been a concern with laptops, and it’s important to utilize the limited hours between charges as efficiently as possible. Choosing which programs you use on your laptop can influence how long the battery will last.
The more resources a program uses, the harder the laptop needs to work, which determines how much power is in demand from the battery. Here are some applications that use up less resources. OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It’s been around for a while, and uses significantly less resources. Some may argue it’s not as fully featured.
Keep in mind that most people use less than 10% of Microsoft Office’s capabilities, so you shouldn’t notice much (if anything) lacking.
The only thing OpenOffice doesn’t include is an e-mail application, but there are plenty of options out there. Foxit PDF Reader is a great replacement for Adobe’s Acrobat PDF Reader – at least the free one. It’s much smaller in size, and creates less of a resource footprint. If you’re only looking to view PDF files, it has everything you’re looking for, and is arguably easier to use. Internet Explorer 9 claims to take up less resources than other browsers. It’s certainly more secure than it’s predecessors, so it’s worth mentioning. Google Chrome is great as well.
We’ve heard praise from tech enthusiasts and average users alike who love how lightweight and quick Chrome is. Mozilla’s Firefox browser has been known to use up a lot of resources, so it may not be ideal if you do a lot of web surfing on your laptop. It’s important to protect your computer from outside threats, and having an effective antivirus is a definite must. Most laptops come with either Norton or McAfee, which are known resource hogs. Using them on a laptop makes little sense. Although we are vendor agnostic, we are very fond of ESET’s NOD32 antivirus, which has been proven to take up limited resources, while being very effective.
Which programs do you use on your laptop to extend the battery life? Is battery life something you consider when choosing a program for your needs? Please share your thoughts in the comments, or on our Facebook fan page, or send us a tweet (@nerdsonsite).
5 years ago I told nerds that we needed to brace for 6 months of a cyber crime spree and protect clients that choose to be protected. Little did I know that 5 years later, we...
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: Let’s talk about phishing. The number of successful...
A slow computer can hurt your bottom line—the minutes spent waiting for the computer to do what it needs to do add up to hours (or even days) each month of unproductive time....
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: Let’s first address some repeat problems we see around...
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: Let’s talk about VPNs. Specifically the retail VPN...
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: First let’s talk about how you and I, just normal,...
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: Let’s briefly talk about network routers and their place...
Welcome to this week in NerdNews (TWINN). Your weekly top 5 technical and security issues Nerds should pay attention to: Let’s first talk about crypto currency. By now it’s...
Congratulations on purchasing your new Epson ET-3760 printer! This article will answer the question How do I Connect My Epson ET-3760 to my Computer? If you have trouble...