COMM 112 Post 2: Arin Pederson

1/24/19

Energy Saving on Laptop: Making all night study sessions without a charger way less risky

As a modern day university student, a personal computer is almost required in this day and age of internet, or at least a device that is comparable to a computer (i.e a tablet or a smartphone). My laptop is detrimental to my success and ability to do college course work. From notes to homework. I had to go without my laptop for three weeks during my first semester here at NDSU, I can tell you from personal experience that while not impossible, life becomes infinitely easier with a laptop.

As far as energy saving is concerned, my Dell laptop has many different ways to output less energy than advertised. Even the Dell official tech support website does not have very much as far as energy saving options presented. You have to dive into the settings but after about five minutes of digging in my settings and a very helpful online article from thesimpledollar.com I was able to find four switchable options that in total save a decent chunk of energy output from my PC:

1. Screen Brightness and Auto Brightness

2. Battery Saving Mode

3. Shutting Down Windows overnight

4. Reduce background applications while using the computer

Changing the brightness is just a matter of going into your computer settings lowering it or turning on auto brightness. In some computers, there is an energy saving mode that is turned off by default, going into your settings and simply turning it on will make a hug difference in how much battery power the computer uses on any task. The third is a little more complicated, but shutting off the Windows 10 client overnight can make a huge difference in the lifespan and passive power usage a computer will put out in sleep/standby mode. To summarize, you go into your task manager and set up a task that shuts down your windows at a specific time, it’s not quite that simple and I seriously recommend you take a look at the article from thesimpledollar.com (The address can be found below). Finally and probably easiest, when you’re using your computer for gaming, web browsing, trolling (If that is up your alley), just make sure nothing else is running in the background that could be using precious battery life. All these processes can be very beneficial to the energy output and lifespan of a laptop/personal computer.

Sources:

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln297929/change-sleep-settings-or-create-modify-a-power-plan-in-windows-10?lang=en

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/8-ways-to-easily-reduce-the-energy-consumption-of-your-computer-and-save-big-money/