Prolong battery life on your Laptops / Mobile Devices

Although mobile devices continue to become more and more powerful, battery technology hasn’t kept up at the same rate so the chances are you’ve found yourself lacking power at a critical moment at some point. For the frequent traveller a second battery is usually the best option (and help4IT can supply them for most devices), but there are things you can do to make the most of your existing battery:

• Disable WIFI and Bluetooth  -  when you don’t need them.  These services often have LED’s hard wired into devices and draw power even when you are not using them.

I received a phone call from a friend who uses a Macbook and they asked me if it is bad when you turn the Mac on if nothing appears on the screen except a folder showing a question mark. After a few minutes of research and a few probing questions I found that the hard drive was making the dreaded clicking noise. It was apparent that the hard drive in the Macbook had died!

 In this particular model Macbook the hard drive was accessible by removing the battery then unscrewing a metal bracket and simply pulling the drive out. Once I had the drive out I attached it to my laptop using a SATA to USB adaptor and booted with Knoppix to see if the drive was accessible at all. The drive was not recognised at first so I tried a full SATA connection in my main computer. I could now see the drive in Vista under Storage Manager but it would not mount at all and it just clicked loudly. Usually this means that the heads are stuck or damaged and at worse they have started to scratch the platter.