Squeezing More Life Out of Your Notebook's Battery Part II

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We were surprised by the many disparate sources of a notebook's battery drain. The complex interplay between software, components and peripherals during the tests we ran provided the basis for a checklist of what to do and what not to do to get the most out of any notebook's battery charge.

DVD Video: The Right Player Software Extends Battery Lifetime

To test battery lifetime for continuous DVD playback we slotted up the DVD for the film Apollo 13, then fired up our DVD player software inside an endless loop. To determine if the choice of player software had an impact on battery lifetime, we ran our test with each of four current DVD software players:

WinDVD Version 7.

PowerDVD Version 6.

VLC Mediaplayer Version 0.8.2.

An Mpeg2-Codec makes Media Player 10 DVD-Video capable.

Naturally, we also want to see if playing a film directly from the hard disk might consume the least amount of energy. For that reason, we also made a 1:1-backup copy of the original DVD on the hard disk, and played it directly from there as well.

Harald Thon