Free, Ad-Supported Mobile Apps Are Killing Your Battery [Batteries]

Filed under "you get what you pay for": Researchers at Microsoft tested the energy consumption of various apps on Android and Windows Phone (iOS restrictions kept them from testing the iPhone) and found that up to 75% of an app's energy use goes to power the advertisements in free, ad-supported apps. The numbers may not have much of an impact without tying them to an app you actually use, so what about an extremely popular game like Angry Birds:

In the case of Angry Birds, research suggested that only 20% of the total energy consumption was used to actually play the game itself.

Of the rest, 45% is used finding out your location with which it can serve targeted advertising.

The lesson: Next time you're choosing the ad-supported version of an app over, say, its $1 counterpart, you may want to consider whether you're willing to pay extra just to keep your battery going longer. Yet another way free stuff isn't always worth it.

BatterySqueezer Extracts Extra Life from Your MacBook's Battery [Mac Downloads]

Although Apple's laptops offer pretty decent battery life, it's not always enough. Getting the most out of your battery often means making a number of sacrifices like turning off Wi-Fi and lowering your display's brightness. While you can't get something for nothing, BatterySqueezer can extract a little more battery life by automatically throttling applications in the background so they don't cause excess drain while not in use.

BatterySqueezer runs in your menubar and defaults to just throttling your web browser when its in the background. It can also throttle other hungry apps like Microsoft Office, iWork, the Mac App Store, and (apparently) Preview. There's a little slider in the preferences (see image above) that lets you determine how responsive background apps are when you return to them, and this is where you realize what you're giving up. When apps are running freely in the background it's so that you can go right back into them without any delay. This has a drain on your battery, however, so BatterySqueezer essentially trades that responsiveness for reduced battery costs.

That's basically all there is to it. You just enter your settings and let BatterySqueezer run. It'll take care of the rest. The full app will cost you $3, but there is a free version as well. We're not sure what its limitations are, but reviewers seem to believe it doesn't actually do anything (so you may want to avoid it).

BatterySqueezer ($3) | Mac App Store

Save your laptop's battery up to 10%

Some laptop users get disappointed  because of the laptop battery is discharging quickly while using laptop without having AC power. Now there is a software for saving your laptop battery power up to 10%, this application called Battery Doubler. Normally, Battery Doubler doesn't use standard techniques such as Lowering the CD quality, dim screen light etc.  However, Battery Doubler determine what to shut down when it is not needed like Wireless application, USB port etc. Battery Doubler works on all windows operating systems but it works best with Windows 98 & ME.

Get Battery Doubler from here


Link
Simply download the application and install it to the laptop then it will show on the taskbar. Hence, click on the Battery Doubler icon in the taskbar. Choose Main Menu and it will open the Main Menu of the application. By default, Turbo charge mode is disabled so you can enable it when you need to recharge the battery quickly. It recharge the battery more faster than normal. You can also calibrate the battery using Battery Doubler. Click wizards tab on the Main Menu and then click on Recalibrate Battery. In the Autonomy Tab, you can choose Maximum autonomy option which will lower CPU usage when possible. In addition to this configurations, Options Tab can be chosen to change Advanced configurations to achieve a lot of autonomy, Battery Doubler can make your battery consumes almost 8 hours if your computer supports ACPI or better. There you can change four selectionsLower hard disk spin (up to 60% less speed)Cut down screen power (up to 75% less luminosity)Low down CD/DVD usage (40% slower)Reduce processor speed (50% slower)

Save your laptop's battery up to 10%

Some laptop users get disappointed  because of the laptop battery is discharging quickly while using laptop without having AC power. Now there is a software for saving your laptop battery power up to 10%, this application called Battery Doubler. Normally, Battery Doubler doesn't use standard techniques such as Lowering the CD quality, dim screen light etc.  However, Battery Doubler determine what to shut down when it is not needed like Wireless application, USB port etc. Battery Doubler works on all windows operating systems but it works best with Windows 98 & ME.

Get Battery Doubler from here


Link
Simply download the application and install it to the laptop then it will show on the taskbar. Hence, click on the Battery Doubler icon in the taskbar. Choose Main Menu and it will open the Main Menu of the application.  By default, Turbo charge mode is disabled so you can enable it when you need to recharge the battery quickly. It recharge the battery more faster than normal. You can also calibrate the battery using Battery Doubler. Click wizards tab on the Main Menu and then click on Recalibrate Battery. In the Autonomy Tab, you can choose Maximum autonomy option which will lower CPU usage when possible. In addition to this configurations, Options Tab can be chosen to change Advanced configurations to achieve a lot of autonomy, Battery Doubler can make your battery consumes almost 8 hours if your computer supports ACPI or better. There you can change four selectionsLower hard disk spin (up to 60% less speed)Cut down screen power (up to 75% less luminosity)Low down CD/DVD usage (40% slower)Reduce processor speed (50% slower)

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