Netbooks are rapidly overtaking the laptop market; their incredible battery life and reasonable pricing are making them more and more popular among everyday consumers. For the most part these new netbook owners are not aware that they can squeeze even more battery life from their computers or, if need be, amp up their mini’s processor to power through a heavier workload. In this article we will address these topics as well as other tricks to get the most out of your netbook.
UPDATE YOUR BIOS
Maintaining an up to date BIOS is very important if you wish to get the most out of your netbook. Bios firmware is the first code which is run when you start up your computer. It boots up your computer’s hardware and identifies and tests it before handing over control to software next in the chain. Manufacturers will occasionally release new firmware which brings with it bug fixes, better hardware compatibility, new settings, and better battery life.
KEEP YOUR DRIVERS UP TO DATE
After updating your motherboard with the newest BIOS Firmware, you should check to see if there are any new drivers available for your netbook. Drivers are the programs that run important computer components such as the touch pad, graphics card, and sound card. By keeping these updated you make sure that all this hardware is functioning as efficiently as possible. Efficiency equals more power and a longer battery life. You can find a list of your netbook’s drivers and their updates at the manufactures site.
BOOTING FASTER
Speeding up your computers boot time is a quick and easy procedure but can make a huge difference in your overall computing experience. Here’s a brief instructional video on how to accelerate your boot time:
Another alternative to booting up each time you want to use your computer is to put it in standby or hibernate. The difference between the two is that standby is almost instant-on while drawing a small amount of battery while hibernate saves the current state to the hard disk and does not drain any battery life. Hibernate saves all your settings and puts your computer into a deep sleep.
USE ORIGINAL SOFTWARE
As surprising as it is, manufacturers will always pre-install the best software they have available for your specific netbook. While many grumblings have been heard over the amount of “bloating” (excess software) that is put into laptops, netbook manufactures such as Asus and HP have done a very good job at keeping software to and utmost minimum.
The Asus’s EEE PC line is the best example of software made specifically for netbooks; they have included a utility called “Eee Super Hybrid Engine” which allows you to clock the CPU frequency at half the default speed (“power saving mode” or roughly 600-800 Mhz), the default (“high performance” speed or 1.6Ghz in the case of the Atom N270), or the “Super Performance Mode” at 1.8 Ghz, which is a 200 Mhz overclock. By using this simple utility, you can squeeze every last bit of power easily and safely from your processor. Note that at the higher speeds, you will generate more heat and draw more power (or battery when not plugged in).
LESS IS MORE
Here’s the most important tip of all. KEEP YOU NETBOOK WELL ORGANIZED AND FREE OF EXCESS FILES, PROGRAMS, MEDIA CLIPS, PICTURES, ETC. The less miscellaneous junk you have on your computer the faster it will be able to sort through and manage the files you do have and the less energy it will expend to do so.
Make sure to keep your desktop as empty as possible, eliminating any animated screen savers and wallpapers. This will drastically increase your boot speed.
Keep your registry and cache clean with applications such as ccleaner.
Defragment your hard drive periodically. This will keep you hard disk as efficient as it can be.
These tips will be sure to speed up your netbook and keep it running at its maximum potential.
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I will say that if you have an Asus use the “Eee Super Hybrid Engine,” because it really works if you want to save power or you want to get the most out of your netbook. I also will state that you should still be skeptical of what the manufacturer pre-installs on your machine. Most of it is still bloat software, IMO. I heavily agree with staying organized and free of excess files. My main philosophy with computer to make them last and have the best performance is to be as minimalistic as possible.