Learn How To Easily Extend Laptop Battery Life

When we say we want to “extend the life of a laptop battery” this could me a couple different things: It could mean you want to make the charge last longer, so if you’re out of the office the charge will get you through until you’re able to plug in again. Or, extending the life of your battery could mean you want to make the battery last as along as you can before you need to physically replace it. Both are directly determined by how you use your laptop. With a little conscious effort, you can utilize tactics that will keep your laptop running happily for years to come.

Increase Laptop Battery Time

You can increase the time between charges by doing some routine maintenance and changing a few settings.

1.      To begin, get in the habit of defragging your hard drive every couple of months. This reduces the amount of work your hard drive needs to do to access data on the drive. Less hard drive movement means less heat and less power drain.

2.      Next, remove any DVDs from your optical drive. A drive will spin if there is a disk in it, so make sure you do not have any disks in the drive.

3.      Turn off Wifi or Bluetooth if you’re not using it. These are usually on by default.

4.      Unplug any external USB devices.

5.      Reduce the brightness of the screen. This can be done using shortcut keys

6.      Hibernate your laptop rather than using standby mode. Hibernating the laptop saves the system current state and shuts the computer down, saving power.

7.      Kill unnecessary programs. Got to start and in the run box, type msconfig and hit ok. Under the start-up tab, uncheck any programs you know do not need to load each time your computer boots up. The less programs you run in the background, the longer your charge will last.

Increase The Lifespan Of Your Laptop Battery

Your laptop battery will usually last between two and three years. These tips will help ensure you do not unintentionally reduce the lifespan of your laptop, and may even help you extend its lifespan.

1.      Do not frequently completely discharge the battery. Continuously running the battery down to noting causes unnecessary strain on the battery and may reduce its life.

2.      Completely discharge the battery once a month. While Lithium-ion batteries don’t suffer from past battery memory issues, it doesn’t hurt to do a controlled drain once a month.

3.      Keep the laptop and battery cool. Heat is a battery killer. Do not leave the laptop in a car or exposed to direct sunlight for an extended period of time.

4.      If your laptop will run without the battery installed, remove it when you know your laptop will be plugged into direct power for a long period of time.

5.      Don’t buy a backup battery. You can buy a backup if you think you’ll need it, but be wary of keeping a battery on the shelf while you wait for the original to die. Ideally, you’ll want to buy a battery that was recently manufactured. If you do have a spare, consider rotating it in with the original so they both have a chance to be used. When not in use, store the batteries in a cool, dry place.

Batteries only last an average of two years, but performing these steps might improve that. You will eventually need to replace the pack when performance drops.

FACEBOOK WILL END ON MARCH 15th!

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March. Managing the site has become too stressful.

“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.

“After March 15th the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business.”

Zuckerberg said that the decision to shut down Facebook was difficult, but that he does not think people will be upset.

“I personally don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said in a private phone interview. “And to be honest, I think it’s for the better. Without Facebook, people will have to go outside and make real friends. That’s always a good thing.”

Some Facebook users were furious upon hearing the shocking news.

“What am I going to do without Facebook?” said Denise Bradshaw, a high school student from Indiana. “My life revolves around it. I’m on Facebook at least 10 hours a day. Now what am I going to do with all that free time?”

However, parents across the country have been experiencing a long anticipated sense of relief.

“I’m glad the Facebook nightmare is over,” said Jon Guttari, a single parent from Detroit. “Now my teenager’s face won’t be glued to a computer screen all day. Maybe I can even have a conversation with her.”

Those in the financial circuit are criticizing Zuckerberg for walking away from a multibillion dollar franchise. Facebook is currently ranked as one of the wealthiest businesses in the world, with economists estimating its value at around 7.9 billion.

But Zuckerberg remains unruffled by these accusations. He says he will stand by his decision to give Facebook the axe.

“I don’t care about the money,” said Zuckerberg. “I just want my old life back.”

The Facebook Corporation suggests that users remove all of their personal information from the website before March 15th. After that date, all photos, notes, links, and videos will be permanently erased.

Man used Facebook to try to blackmail girl for pornse

A 27-year-old California man pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges that he tried to coerce a 14-year-old girl into sending him pornographic videos by threatening to publicize sexually explicit pictures of her that he'd dug up.

Starting in December 2008, James Dale Brown used Facebook to contact the girl, who lived out-of-state, demanding that she send him a video of her having sex.

Somehow he'd obtained photos of the girl, some of which were sexually explicit. He said that if she did not send him a video, he would send the pictures to the unidentified victims' underage friends. If she sent the video, he promised to "delete all pictures of her 'from the Internet,'" the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday in a statement.
Brown, a United Parcel Service (UPS) worker who used the alias "Bob Lewis" on Facebook, finally carried out his threat on April 18, 2009, sending links to an explicit image of the girl to one of the victim's friends. Five days later, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Brown's Fremont, California, residence. He was arrested on Aug. 26, 2010.
Brown's lawyer, Robert Beles, could not be reached immediately for comment.

Just last month, another California man, George Bronk, admitted to breaking into more than 3,200 e-mail accounts in a hunt for explicit photos of women. He would use Facebook to learn answers to the security questions that Web-based e-mail services use to reset passwords and then use that information to break into his victims' Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts.

Bronk ultimately convinced one woman to send him even more explicit photographs before he was arrested last year.
It isn't surprising that there are so many of these images in women's e-mail out-boxes and mobile phones, according to Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
According to her, a May 2010 Pew survey found that 6 percent of adults have sent a "suggestive nude or nearly nude photos of themselves to someone else via text messaging," a practice known as "sexting," she said in a January e-mail interview. Amongst 18-to-29 year-olds, that group jumped to 13 percent.
In another survey, Pew found that 15 percent of cell-phone owning teenagers had been sent sexuallysuggestive photos or videos of someone they know.
Brown could face 30 years in prison on the extortion and child pornography charges. He's set to be sentenced on May 11.

Blocking Internet cost Egypt at least $90M, says OECD

Daily losses from the blockade ran at about $18M

The Egyptian government's five-day block of Internet services cost the national economy at least $90 million, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday.


The Paris-based organization said telecommunications and Internet services account for between 3% and 4% of Egypt's GDP, so the daily loss amounted to around $18 million.

The Internet block was lifted on Wednesday, but it might be much longer before the true cost of the government's action on the economy is known.

By cutting telecommunications links, the government severed links between domestic and international high-tech firms and the rest of the world. As a result, the OECD warned, Egypt could find it "much more difficult in the future to attract foreign companies and assure them that the networks will remain reliable."
Egypt's major Internet service providers stopped routing traffic just after midnight local time on Friday as protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak gathered momentum in Cairo.


In minutes, the amount of Internet traffic flowing between Egypt and the rest of the world was reduced to a trickle, according to monitoring by Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks.

"We have never seen a country as connected as Egypt completely lose Internet connectivity for such an extended period," said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, on the company's security blog.

"Unlike periods as recent as a decade ago, governments of technically developed countries cannot disrupt telecommunication without incurring significant economic cost and social / political pressures," he said.

Lawmakers seek more answers from Facebook CEO Zuckerberg

Reps Markey, Barton seek information on new feature designed to provide user data to third parties

For the second time in less than six months, two influential U.S. Congressmen have sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg questioning the social network's data-sharing practices.


The latest letter from U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) was prompted by Facebook's plan to make the addresses and mobile phone numbers of its users available to third-parties.

The feature, unveiled in January, aims to let external application developers and publishers access the full physical address and mobile phone numbers of Facebook users -- although only with their permission.

Facebook withdrew the feature a few days later amid privacy concerns. The company said it plans to relaunch it in a few weeks after some updates.

In their letter dated Feb 2, Markey and Barton, co-chairmen of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, asked Zuckerberg's nearly a dozen questions related to the proposed roll-out.

For instance, the pair ask Zuckerberg whether the updated feature will open more information to third-parties.

It also sought information on measures that Facebook plans to protect personal information of children and teenagers from being accessed by third-parties.
, an author of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), is working on a bill that would prevent advertisers from tracking the online browsing habits of kids.

The letter also seeks information the opt-in and opt-out options for the new Facebook feature, and on how prominent they will be.

The letter also pointedly notes that Facebook announced the feature in a blog post aimed at developers, and asks how the company plans to formally notify users of the new feature.

The Congressman also ask Zuckerberg to provide details on what information Facebook collected about users before it suspended the feature.

The first letter Markey and Barton sent to Zuckerberg last October sought information on reports that popular Facebook applications such as FarmVille and Texas HoldEm Poker had been collecting and sharing user information with dozens of advertising firms.

Noting Zuckerberg's response to that letter, the Congressman asked: "Why is Facebook, after previously acknowledging in a letter to Reps. Markey and Barton that sharing a Facebook User ID could raise user concerns, subsequently considering sharing access to even more sensitive personal information such as home addresses and phone numbers to third parties?"

In response to a request for comment on the letter today, Facebook e-mailed a statement that made no direct reference to Markey and Barton's letter. "As an innovative company that is responsive to its users, we believe there is tremendous value in giving people the freedom and control to take information they put on Facebook with them to other websites," the statement said.

The statement stressed Facebook's commitment to ensuring that user information is shared only with the explicit consent of users and notes that its system of user permissions was designed in collaboration with privacy experts.

The Facebook state acknowledged the need for additional privacy enhancements before the new feature can be enabled. "Great people at the company are working on that and we look forward to sharing their progress soon."