Jepsen Works to Raise Laptop Battery Life to 20-40 Hours

From Yahoo! Tech -

Ex-OLPC CTO (and before that, ex-head of Intel's display division) Mary Lou Jepsen plans to start shipping ultra-low power screens for laptops and e-books by the second half of next year that people can read in direct sunlight and have a fully saturated HDTV-quality color mode. The screens will cost a third that of traditional LCD screens and use about a tenth of the power.

Jepsen's start-up company, Pixel Qi, is also developing notebooks around the technology, allowing them to be so energy efficient they'll be able to run on a standard laptop battery for 20 to 40 hours before needing a recharge.

Asus to offer £10 battery upgrades on Eee PC

From PC Pro UK -

Asus may offer British Eee PC owners a cheap battery upgrade to quell the fury that's erupted over the company's decision to supply lower-capacity batteries to British buyers. British owners of the Eee PC 900 have been supplied with a 4400mAh battery, while laptops shipped in North America came with a 5800mAh battery.

Asus has publicly blamed the LG Chem battery factory fire for the situation, claiming that a shortage of available 5800mAh batteries forced it to put the lower-capacity model in British machines.

Source article here.

Asus speaks out on UK Eee PC 900 battery issue

According to Register Hardware Asus is bundling the 900 with a 4400mAh battery for the EU market and the bigger 5800mAh for the U.S. A Asus UK spokesperson confirmed this, stating, "Asus offers different solutions in different markets. In EU countries, we use 4400mAh [with the] Eee 900. However, we give a two-year warranty within the country you bought the Eee 900."

Asus has previously reacted to buyer complaints in Hong Kong on the same issue by offering free battery upgrades.

Source Article here.

Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

Friedbeef’s Tech has a list of ways to maximize battery life. The tips are general in nature and some don't even apply but generally you can use you most of them. Some of these are -

Dim your screen
Set to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

Cut down on programs running in the background.
All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.

Cut down external devices
USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use.

Add more RAM
This will allow you to process more with memory your Eee PC has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs.

Keep the battery contacts clean.
Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

Take care of your battery
Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge.

Complete list can be read here.