More Ways To Extend Battery Life: Low-Power Displays

The biggest drain on notebook life is always the display.  Fiddling with the brightness on your notebook can get you a significant amount of battery life, though sometimes comes with eye strain (especially in sunlight).  Some companies are focusing on increasing battery life while others are working on other aspects of notebook and netbook hardware. Mary Lou Jepsen, designer of the OLPC XO netbook, has a start-up that creates screens that use so little power that the laptops they’re attached to will be able to get 20 – 40 hours of life with standard batteries. Yes, 20 – 40 hours. That’s a big claim, but keep in mind that the screens on the XO laptops use about 1/10th of the power of traditional LCD screens and can be read in bright sunlight.  If Jepsen’s new screens can do better than that, the dream of all day notebooks and 2 day netbooks may come to fruition. Source: Yahoo Tech/PC World Hat Tip: Gadget Labs