Tag: Power

Pep Up Your Laptop Speed by Checking the Power Management Settings

A quick tip for this evening. Many of us have laptops and we do need to use them away from a power point when required. However, this often means that your laptop is running in a low power consumption mode designed to prolong battery life at the expense of performance. This can be a pain …

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Nuclear Power: A Polarising Technology

Just a quick one for tonight. For decades there has been debate over the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power including aspects such as emissions generated during power generation as well as control and containment when the core needs to be shutdown in an emergency. Personally, I didn’t know where I stood on the concept …

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Japan Quakes of March 2011

Most people would have seen or heard the news about the quakes in Japan over the last couple of days and my wife and I were certainly not expecting to be experiencing it first hand on the 35th floor of The Ritz-Carlton in Osaka. There is nothing like the sensation of a building swaying from …

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Know the Difference Between Wall Chargers and USB Chargers

Another short, sharp tip for this evening. It seems these days that we have a constant merry-go-round of gadgets needing to be recharged be it mobile phones, tablet devices, portable music devices, wireless console controllers or even USB batteries. Sometimes, we just need to charge something quickly without knowing which option is necessarily best. USB …

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Adjust Text Brightness on Android with Screen Filter

A tip for the Android users out there. Have you ever woken up during the night and needed to check your phone only to find your eyes burnt by the brightness of the screen even on the minimum or automatic brightness setting? It’s definitely not a pleasant experience but there is something you can do …

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Reclaim Space – Remove an Unnecessary Windows Hibernation File

Yesterday, I wrote an article about a great little utility called WinDirStat and its ability to create a bitmap of what files and folders are consuming the most space on your drives. One thing I did discover was a huge 9GB hiberfil.sys file on my C: partition that was serving no real purpose as I …

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Sleep and Hibernation Modes – What’s the Difference?

Over the years the humble shut down menu in Windows has been home to a number of options since it appeared back in Windows 95. If you can cast your mind back fifteen years, the usual suspects in the menu were: Shut down the computer Restart the computer Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode Close …

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First Impressions – Google Navigation Arrives Down Under

Google Navigation (Traffic Conditions)

If you have been watching either the Twitter feed or Facebook page for Boydo’s Tech Talk you would have seen that Google Navigation was officially released yesterday. This is good news for those of you who have had to hack their Android devices with Brut Google Maps to get turn-by-turn navigation as there is now …

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Tips to Further Extend Your Mobile Device Battery Life

The last couple of blog updates have covered ways to prolong your battery life using your existing battery and either supplementary chargers or altering your usage habits. Whilst those approaches may go some way to help you get through those longer periods sometimes you can’t beat a bigger battery. Not all devices allow you to …

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A Backup Battery for Your Mac and Portable Devices

A while back, I wanted to get my wife an external battery to take overseas just in case she was away from a power point longer than her devices could retain their juice. I also was interested in something that could also recharge her MacBook Pro if it were in dire need of power. The …

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