Long Live Your Laptop Battery!

Laptop batteries are like people--eventually and inevitably, they die. And like people, they don't obey Moore's Law--You can't expect next year's batteries to last twice as long as this year's. Battery technology may improve a bit over time (after all, there's plenty of financial incentive for better batteries), but, while interesting possibilities may pop up, don't expect major battery breakthroughs in the near future.

Although your battery will eventually die, proper care can put off the inevitable. Here's how to keep your laptop battery working for as long as possible. With luck, it could last until you need to replace that aging notebook (perhaps with a laptop having a longer battery life).

I've also included a few tips on keeping the battery going longer between charges, so you can work longer without AC power.
Don't Run It Down to Empty


Squeezing every drop of juice out of a lithium ion battery (the type used in today's laptops) strains and weakens it. Doing this once or twice won't kill the battery, but the cumulative effect of frequently emptying your battery will shorten its lifespan.

(There's actually an exception to this rule--a circumstance where you should run down the battery all the way. I'll get to that later.)

The good news: You probably can't run down the battery, anyway--at least not without going to a lot of trouble to do so. Most modern laptops are designed to shut down before the battery is empty.

In fact, Vista and Windows 7 come with a setting for just this purpose. To see it, click Start, type power, and select Power Options. Click any one of the Change plan settings links, then the Change advanced power settings link. In the resulting dialog box, scroll down to and expand the Battery option. Then expand Critical battery level. The setting will probably be about 5 percent, which is a good place to leave it.

XP has no such native setting, although your laptop may have a vendor-supplied tool that does the same job.

Keep It Cool
Heat breaks down the battery, and reduces its overall life.

When you use your laptop, make sure the vents are unblocked. Never work with the laptop on pillows or cushions. If possible, put it on a raised stand that allows for plenty of airflow.

Also, clean the vents every so often with a can of compressed air. You can buy this for a few dollars at any computer store. Be sure to follow the directions on the can, and do this only when the notebook is off.

Give It a Rest
If you're going to be working exclusively on AC power for a week or more, remove the battery first.

Otherwise, you'll be wearing out the battery--constantly charging and discharging it--at a time when you don't need to use it at all. You're also heating it up (see "Keep It Cool," above).

You don't want it too empty when you take it out. An unused battery loses power over time, and you don't want all the power to drain away, so remove it when it's at least half-charged.

Never remove the battery while the computer is on, or even in standby or sleep mode; doing so will crash your system and possibly damage your hardware. Even inserting a battery into a running laptop can damage the system. So only remove or reinsert the battery when the laptop is completely off or hibernating.

If you've never removed your laptop's battery and don't know how, check your documentation. (If you don't have it, you can probably find it online.) The instructions generally involve turning the laptop upside-down and holding down a button while you slide out the battery.

Longer Life Between Charges
The tips above should lengthen the time before you need to replace your laptop's battery. But on a daily basis, we're far more concerned with another type of battery life: how long we can keep our laptop running without AC power. You may know most of the following tips already, but it never hurts to refresh (or recharge) your memory.

India "Nailed" pakistan

Wat a shot that is it was huge enough to shatter the smiles of pakistani players and that came just when necessary from "Harbhajan"(Commentator applauded "Sing is king") to "punch" pakistan out of the asia cup and india confirms their place in the finals of the asia cup and will be confronting lankan in the finals ;...

It was a typical india-pakistan match where india showed their supreme domination over their rivals,there was everything in this game to end india winning it in a last over thriller with bajji going big over the midwicket region,such was the intensity of the game as pakistan must win this game to stay in the tournament it was hard to pick the winner but atlast Raina took the game away in the final overs,once in looked easy but last over tension has taken his wicket,thats a part of the game as india rocket in the finals of the asia cup....

At the heroics of bajji,glorious fielding form indians in the outfield helped india outclass the pakistani,but pakistani bowlers did extremely well in the beginning shewag was cramped for room and could do nothing but just hang on for a while...

A mobile that will operate with gaze of an eye

In the not so distant future you would only need to look at your spectacles intently to read your mobile messages or watch a video clip, apart from making the basic phone call.

Finnish mobile technology giant, the $50-billion Nokia, is working on a gizmo in which an eye gaze is the critical factor. You look intently at a message or at a video icon and they would open right in front of your eyes.

“We are working on a mobile that operates with the gaze of an eye,” Jyri Huopaniemi, director with Nokia’s research centre, told IANS correspondent during a visit to the company’s headquarters in the Finnish capital.

Called the Gaze Tracker, a prototype of this cutting-edge technology product is on display at the company’s lounge in a gargantuan atrium that does justice to the impressive glass face.

“One only needs to wear this, put on an arm band and place the ear piece in the ear. Then, you would be able to read the messages in the Gaze Tracker,” explained Marika Gallar who works in the lounge, showing the gizmo to this correspondent.

“This mobile phone needs to be calibrated to your eye so that it reads your eye movements,” she said. She did not say when the device would hit the market. “I don’t know,” she said cryptically, refusing to divulge any more confidential business information.

She said people all over the world, gizmo lovers or otherwise, eagerly look forward to mobile phone developments at Nokia. “People just love it,” she said with a smile.

The Nokia lounge not only shows early products, including an obese handset that was among the first to hit the market and cost a small fortune to the latest offerings that are state-of-the-art and have excellent sound and picture quality.

Officials here are impressed with the growth of the Indian mobile phone market. “We know you add some 20 million new connections every month - that is four times our population,” said a senior executive.

India is the second largest market for Nokia after China.

India Reloaded

Indians will be facing bangaldesh in their 1st match of Asia cup,this will be intresting because all the seniors were rested for the zimbabwe tour and it will be testing time for the senior players who will make their come back today after resting for a month ...it will be different facing bangla desh this time as this side can surprise the opposition at any momment and india is not coming up their full strength as sachin requested rest for the asia cup and yuvraj was removed from the side due to bad performance in the past ...

On a whole it will test the stability of indian side as a whole and hope india moves forward with a win...

Bloody Sunday

At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian industrial employee worked on average an 11 hour day (10 hours on Saturday). Conditions in the factories were extremely harsh and little concern was shown for the workers' health and safety. Attempts by workers to form trade unions were resisted by the factory owners and in 1903, a priest, Father George Gapon, formed the Assembly of Russian Workers. Within a year it had over 9,000 members.

1904 was a bad year for Russian workers. Prices of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 per cent. When four members of the Assembly of Russian Workers were dismissed at the Putilov Iron Works, Gapon called for industrial action. Over the next few days over 110,000 workers in St. Petersburg went out on strike.

In an attempt to settle the dispute, George Gapon decided to make a personal appeal to Nicholas II. He drew up a petition outlining the workers' sufferings and demands. This included calling for a reduction in the working day to eight hours, an increase in wages and an improvement in working conditions. Gapon also called for the establishment of universal suffrage and an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

Over 150,000 people signed the petition and on 22nd January, 1905, Gapon led a large procession of workers to the Winter Palace in order to present the petition to Nicholas II. When the procession of workers reached the Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks. Over 100 workers were killed and some 300 wounded. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, signalled the start of the 1905 Revolution.

Make ur pc talk...

Copy the following code in a notepad and save it as '.vbs' extension
Click on the saved file and type the word u want to hear from the PC!!
------------------------------------------------
Dim msg, sapi
msg=InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it")
Set sapi=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")
sapi.Speak msg
------------------------------------------------

Facebook 'sexiest video' malware

If you get a posting on your Facebook wall telling you "this is without doubt the sexiest video ever! :P :P :P" which seems to be accompanied by a video titled "Candid Camera Prank [HQ]" then don't click on the video: it's a lead-in to malware.

Clicking the link will take you to what seems like a Facebook application which then tells you that your video player is out of date – and encourages you to download a file.

If you do, then the same "video" plus link gets posted using your avatar to al your friends on Facebook -– meaning it is spreading virally.

It's not clear at present whether Facebook has acted to halt it. You should, however, expect that it will mutate in the coming hours/days (depending on how determined the virus writer is), so it might not be exactly that message or video frame. The key element in the attack is that it tells you to download a file.


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