How to Prolong Your Laptop Battery Life

how to prolong your laptop battery life

Laptops give you the flexibility and portability to work from wherever you want, making them the computer of choice for many individuals. However, using a laptop means that you are only portable as long as you have battery life remaining, which can make it important to take certain steps to extend your laptop battery life. Here are a few steps you can take to make your fully charged laptop battery last as long as possible.

Laptop Battery Life

Adjust Your Laptop’s Power Settings

One of the easiest ways to conserve power on your laptop is to use the power reduction settings that come standard on many Apple and Windows computers. These settings will automatically regulate your computer and attempt to minimize energy consumption by turning off features that drain your laptop’s battery such as your screensaver.

Adjust System Settings

On top of using your laptop’s power-saving settings, you can also manually adjust certain settings to help your laptop conserve energy. For instance, reducing your screen’s brightness, and turning off your keyboard’s backlighting, can greatly extend your battery’s life. Additionally, you can set your laptop to hibernate automatically after a certain period of disuse as another way to reduce power consumption.

Close Unused Tabs and Windows

What many laptop users are unaware of is the extent to which having multiple windows and tabs open can drain their battery. However, having a variety of tabs and windows working in the background on your laptop will drain excess power and shorten your battery’s life. You will then want to keep only the most necessary tabs open when working off your battery in order to save power.

While certain laptops have shorter battery lives than others, there are steps you can take to make your laptop’s battery last as long as possible. Contact us to learn more about what you can do to conserve your laptop’s battery.

 

 

 

Computer Tip of the Day: Save Your Eyes From the Computer

computer tip of the day save your eyes from the computer

Have you ever noticed that it’s difficult to fall sleep if you use your phone, computer, or tablet late at night? Do you ever think about the fact that you need to save your eyes from the computer? Although some people will argue that this is because you’re not letting your mind rest, there’s a simpler explanation involving the types of lights you expose your eyes to.

If you check out Topbulb.com, they have a lot of information regarding different color temperatures, which are measured in the unit Kelvins. Here’s what you really need to know:

  • 2700-2800K is warm light. This is the standard incandescent light bulb you see in houses and apartments.
  • 3500-4000K is neutral bright light. It’s a little cooler than warm light and the higher end of the range starts to show a bit of blue.
  • 5000-6500K is daylight. You’ll sometimes see this during daytime indoors, but it would be very much out of place during the evening. Most digital screens are set at 6500K.

Now you see the problem. Your mind is telling you one thing — that you should go to sleep — but your body is telling you something else — that it’s daytime. Your laptop screen is throwing your eyes off and keeping you up at night.

(Quick note: this is exactly why reading a book helps you go to sleep. It’s not that videos and text messages themselves keep you up, but rather that the screen messes with your eyes. Books, on the other hand, just require a dim warm light for reading.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of options to deal with this. The famous one is an app called f.lux, which controls your screen’s color temperature based on the sunrise and sunset of your geographical location. Also, Windows 10 has this feature built-in if you go to Display >> Blue Light Settings and set up a schedule.

As an added bonus, there are mobile apps for your smartphone and tablet that do the same thing. Try them out and see if it makes falling asleep easier.

For more information about computer tips or IT support, or anything else, contact us today.

Computer Tip of the Day: How to Keep Your Email Inbox Clean

computer tip of the day how to keep your email inbox clean

It doesn’t take long for an email inbox to become littered with messages that are completely forgotten, not relevant anymore or downright spam or junk mail.  Most individuals receive thousands of emails every month, yet only a handful of messages are still relevant after a few weeks.  Here are a few tips to help you manage your email inbox instead of allowing it to manage you.

Turn Off Email Notifications

It might sound counter-productive to turn off your email notifications, but allowing notifications to constantly interrupt you is distracting and stressful.  Instead of stopping your current activities to address an email, set aside a certain amount of time at regular intervals, perhaps the first 10 minutes of every hour, to check your email.  This way, you stay in charge of your time and maintain your focus on the task at hand.

Setup Rules, Filters or Labels

Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with your particular email program and how it can help you organize all incoming emails.  You can always find a free tutorial online or ask your IT support person how to take advantage of the built-in organizational tools found in every email program.  Spending a bit of time up front to filter the unimportant from the important, organizing emails in folders, etc. can save a lot of time in the long run.

Automatic Replies and Canned Responses

If you find yourself repeating the same responses over and over, consider creating a list of your frequent replies that you can copy and paste.  Review your particular email program for instructions on how to set up automatic replies and use them if you need to.

Want to know more tips on how to keep your email inbox manageable? Contact us.

Protect Your Organization From the Risk of Default Configurations

protect your organization from the risk of default configurations

Default Configurations

Preventing information security incidents requires application of proper best practice cybersecurity configurations. Applying best practice configurations at the network infrastructure, system, service and application levels can even protect your organization and thwart information security threats not yet in existence by substantially decreasing the organization’s cyber security attack surface. Cyber-criminals tend to look for common configuration oversights that render organizations easy prey for cyber attacks. If systems within your organization support the following configurations, potential for an information security breach is quite high.

One common configuration error that renders organizations an easy target is system deployment with factory default configurations enabled. When experienced hackers perform reconnaissance on potential victims, they often use search engines to identify systems within the victim organization that run default configurations. If a system runs default settings, attackers simply lookup the default account username and password of the system, log in to the system, and then use the compromised system to gain unauthorized access to other systems within the organization. Since the compromised system is usually a trusted component of the organization’s network, it is often trivial for the attackers to gain access to other, more critical systems within the organization.

Another configuration best practice example that is often overlooked is granting system user account permissions only to the resources necessary and required for the user to perform their duties within the organization. Too often, user accounts possess administrator permissions to the workstation because this configuration enables the user to install and uninstall software, updates, and change configurations as needed to perform their work. However, if an attacker (or malware) gains access to an account with administrator permissions, the attacker then has full access to install malware and remote access services on the compromised system, then using the compromised system to attack other systems throughout the organization.

Contact us today for a security assessment of the information system configurations within your company to reduce the organization’s attack surface and risk exposure.

Computer Tip of the Day – 3 Ways to Record Screen Capture Videos

computer tip of the day 3 ways to record screen capture videos

Being able to capture and record your screen is extremely useful if you want to create a video tutorial and you need to show your viewers specific websites or applications you are using. Here are a few tools that you can use to record screen capture videos.

Record Screen Capture Videos

Camtasia

Camtasia Studio, by Techsmith, is probably the most used screen recording and video editing software out there. You can record your screen movement, and there are numerous editing possibilities that you can apply to your videos. Techsmith also owns Snagit, a tool that you can use to take and edit screenshots.

Screen-Cast-O-Matic

If you’re looking for a free alternative to Camtasia, consider using Screen-Cast-O-Matic. The free version is somewhat limited, but you can still record great screen videos. There are also some editing features available, such as the ability to add captions. Screen-Cast-O-Matic is available for download on Windows PCs.

Nimbus

Another free screen recording software is Nimbus. It can be added to both Chrome and Firefox browsers. Although it comes as a browser add-on, it has the ability to record your desktop as well. It also has superb screenshot taking capabilities, along with editing features, including the ability to add arrows, text, blur, captions, and much more. You can create a Nimbus account and send your captures there to be stored in the cloud. Because it comes as a browser add-on, it is one of the few screen recording software that can be used on Chromebooks, which don’t support regular application downloads.

For more tech tips, just contact us.