I have a better way to get battery life out of a LAPTOP!!!

[zoomtechtv]

Change the back ground to BLACK. And change your SCHEME to black as well.

If you need to use the internet use OPERA and render all web pages in black. The only time this will be a problem is when you go to a website like revision3.com that is in black to begin with.

Also laptops that use share memory can get better battery life as there is no video card to take up more power.

[damnedeyez]

I've done that for 4-5 years now...though I use Firefox. (The only problem being, I do it via the option that disables sites using their own colors...which also disables background images, which affects CSS and makes Rev3 and other places a bit difficult. screenshot (http://mware.ca/~eyez/images/color.png))


Edit: not that I do this for power reasons, as you're suggesting...just lighting reasons.

[moose9905]

That's odd... As the owner of two very different laptops, I have tried that once on each one and it did nothing in the way of conserving battery life, except maybe an unnoticeable minute or two. Maybe for the exact reason Patrick said, the backlight. Even when you display black, the backlight is still on as if it were displaying white, pink, orange, blue, or pink and purple polka dots. But that's just my $.02 ...

[blacklabelsk8erx]

That's odd... As the owner of two very different laptops, I have tried that once on each one and it did nothing in the way of conserving battery life, except maybe an unnoticeable minute or two. Maybe for the exact reason Patrick said, the backlight. Even when you display black, the backlight is still on as if it were displaying white, pink, orange, blue, or pink and purple polka dots. But that's just my $.02 ...

Right, I agree with Moose. The backlight is still having to illuminate the same intensity of light whether it be black or white or Hyper Neon Aquamarine(tm).

I'm not a physics major, but I don't think the photons really differentiate that much between colours. Now, as Patrick and others have recommended the backlight brightness is something that can help battery life due to the screen consuming less power if the screen is less bright. (Less intense light is less power intensive to maintain! :P) I mean, yeah....in an extremely minute, miniscule way the colour of light being emitted can affect the energy being consumed but I don't think it would ever amount to anything noticeable. Have you ever really timed it out by encoding identical files while using dark themes vs. light themes? Are you sure its not a placebo effect? :x

[maynza]

If you have ever taken apart a device that uses an LCD (I broke my razr phone and found this out the hard way), the back light is always constant. Think of the colors you see as being on top of a separate layer of light. Changing your themes is only going to change how much light gets through the color layer to your eye it isn't going to change the amount of light the device actually puts out. When I took the color layer off of my razor, it acted more like a flashlight, and was actually pretty useful.

[damnedeyez]

It really only affects power on a CRT...but the numbers are still generally negligible, if I recall.

[spiri]

Yeah, this has been discussed before - with the whole black Google thing. And as others have said it only has an effect on CRT monitors