better battery life out of a laptop

[neil.f]

2 points to consider-

1- Re IainB's post - the cap from Hard Disk Sentinel
  Required Power  for spinup -
the value shown is the Current [milliAmps] the actual Power, for a 5 Volt laptop Hard disk, would be 4.7 Watts.
 -- [ Power is Voltage X Current ] --  940 mA = 0.94 A   so   0.94 A x 5 V = 4.7 W

2- Re the posts about setting Background/Foreground colours to Dark/Light would only apply to LED screens,
as LCD screens use a fluorescent or LED backlight which would use the same Power, depending on brightness.
  There is a difference between LED Screens & LED Backlit LCD screens

[dr_andus]

Something worth considering is buying a laptop specifically designed for long battery life.  If you aren't very particular about other features you may be able to get a used one cheap on ebay..
Being able to move to an ssd would be a side benefit.

-mouser (July 10, 2016, 03:17 AM)

Uhh... I'm quite peculiar with my hardware preferences. A huge screen, a large keyboard, win7, and a price cap of $400 (really) were the musts dictating the choice. I'm lucky that newegg gave me this one. And I'd rather stick with it, rather than migrate to a win8+ thingie.

-eleman (July 10, 2016, 03:40 AM)

An alternative approach could be an affordable refurb Chromebook with top specs (such as Dell Chromebook 13 core i5 with 8GB RAM), and then use Chrome Remote Desktop to access your existing Windows laptop, if you really have to.

I've just got one of these Dell deals recently, and the battery life is incredible. It's past lunch time over here, I've already been using it today for a couple of hours, and it says I got 13 hours of battery life left.

Yesterday I used it for a full work day, and it had 3 hours left when I got back home. I also use it to access my workplace Windows systems using VMware Horizon Client, when I must use MS Word and such.

And then of course Chrome OS with i5 and 8GB RAM just flies, the fastest browsing I've ever experienced.

[IainB]

I was just installing this app on a laptop and realised that I had omitted to mention it here and its relevance to laptop battery-saving. It's a very effective app - it simply switches OFF the laptop display (i.e., it doesn't just dim it). The display comes back on at the touch of any key.
Turn off your notebook LCD with one-click

[Ath]

I was just installing this app on a laptop and realised that I had omitted to mention it here and its relevance to laptop battery-saving. It's a very effective app - it simply switches OFF the laptop display (i.e., it doesn't just dim it). The display comes back on at the touch of any key.
Turn off your notebook LCD with one-click

-IainB (October 10, 2016, 12:09 AM)

That's much easier that the <fn>-F<num> found on some laptops that can turn the screen off/on. You have to use the same hotkey there for turning it back on, and that can be annoying.