Mobile phone manufacturers selling in Europe had previously agreed to follow a common charger standard, and now those specifications are being put into place in 2011.
When the lights go down in the city your computer doesn’t have to go down along with them. Learn how to configure an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for your computer — you’ll be working through brownouts and shutting down gently in blackouts.
Windows only: Like Caffeine for the Mac, tiny Windows app Insomnia will keep your computer awake for those long-running jobs that need its full attention.
If Linux is your primary on-the-go computer OS, you’ll find that it’s really versatile in handling power consumption — if you know how to get around its settings. A poster at the Productive Geek forums shows us some power-saving setups.
We’ve featured a way to switch power management plans with a hotkey, but if you’d rather not mess with the command line (or if you’re just more of a mouse user), you can add a simple button to your Windows taskbar instead.
We’ve long been advocates of taking a powerboard on the road, but the bulky size of many chargers means you can’t always utilise every slot. The Powerhand eliminates that issue by offering five linked outlets on individual short leads, meaning you can easily charge multiple devices no matter what size is involved.
Whether you just want to conserve your laptop’s battery or you’re taking full advantage of your solid state drive, some people prefer hibernation to sleep. Ubuntu’s settings don’t make it easy to enable auto-hibernation, though, so here’s how to do it yourself.
In our round-up of how to make the most of in seat power, I wrote that no domestic flights yet offer in-seat power for economy customers. Well, I stand corrected: the very same day that column got published, I flew on a Qantas A330-200 from Perth to Sydney that offered in-seat power even in the cheap seats.
I hardly ever use the safes in hotel rooms, and one major reason is that they’re rarely large enough to fit even a moderately-sized notebook PC. The hotel room I’ve been staying in this week not only solves that problem, but adds something even more useful to the internals of the safe: a power outlet.
