Friday 13 August 2010

How to Prevent a Laptop From Overheating


Every laptop begins to overheat at one time or another if it's maintenance is not done regularly. Have you ever tried to put your hands next to laptop's fan vents?
Tried to feel the temperature on the flip side of laptop? If its hot like surface of the sun than probably your laptop is overheating. Overheating usually occurs when you don't do regular laptop maintenance. Overheating of laptop is not good, it can cause internal hardware failure and permanent damage. A sure sign that your laptop or notebook gets very hot is when it's cooling fan is always running at it's maximum speed. Because of this, your laptop's performance gets reduced as the CPU cuts back the clock rate to evade heat pressure and sometimes gets shut down without any notifications. To avoid overheating of laptop and thereby to improve it's performance follow below mentioned easy suggestions.

Avoid Doing Too Many Multiple Tasks at One Instant

Laptop's cooling fan speed increases depending on the temperature of CPU which is directly linked to the number of task it performs at one time. Less number of tasks = Less CPU usage = Low CPU temperature = Low fan speed = High performance, less heating, no random shutdowns.

Try If Any Software Helps

If you can't explore the system settings, you can download any free software tools like RightMark CPU Clock Utility through which you can control and reduce the brightness of laptop's screen or reduce the CPU clock speed. In most OS, undervolting or underclocking is done in the BIOS (Basic Input/Output system).

Unplug The system When Battery gets Fully Charged

Don't be lazy and unplug the system whenever battery is fully charged, leaving the system plugged to an electric supply for long time even after the battery has charged up fully will result into heating up your system unnecessarily. Doing this will not only avoid unnecessary heating of system but will also increase battery's life. Plug-in again when battery power becomes low. If you wish to keep it plugged all the time while your laptop is ON, you could remove the battery and plug-in back to electric supply. Now your laptop is solely working on power supply like computer, this will protect and increase battery life.

Clear Cooling Fan's Area

Make sure that there is no blockage or obstacle near the cooling fan's vent. If you find any blockage, immediately remove it. Cooling fan does the job of cooling CPU, internal components inside by sucking fresh air and blowing hot air out, if fan's enclosing area is blocked then hot air would be reflected and get trapped inside which will heat up the system and may also cause damage to hard disk, internal components.

Clean Cooling Fan From Inside

If you haven't cleaned or done the maintenance of laptop for a long time, there is a possibility of vents being accumulated by layers of dust and debris. Due to dust, less amount of air leaves/enters inside thus consuming more time and power to cool down components. Unscrew the case by reading laptop's manual or visiting their site to find out how to access,clean parts. Before you begin, shut down your laptop, unplug the electric supply, remove battery, ground yourself. To clean fan make use of a cotton swab dipped in a drop of cleaning spirit, compressed air, vacuum cleaner, brushes, wet cloth and to prevent damage to the fan, do not let fan revolve in wrong direction.

Avoid Using Laptop on Bed

Using laptop on bed or blanket or pillows will block air vents underneath thereby heat gets build up inside slowly slowly. It will also cause the cooling fan's to suck the dust and debris which lies in the bed. To avoid this, you can use laptop by tilting it or placing small piece cloth/paper rolled underneath thus providing breathing space. You can also use laptop-holder.

Shut Down Before Bagging Laptop

Closing down directly or putting laptop on stand-by mode will still allow processor to work actively and produce heat. If you bag your laptop in such mode, it'll result into overheating of your laptop as well as bag, as there will be no circulation of fresh air inside bag. Always shut down your laptop before bagging.

Avoid Placing Laptop in Hot Weather Conditions And Direct Sunlight

Even though your laptop doesn't overheats repeatedly and regularly, hot weather surroundings will contribute heat and will cause problems from overheating your laptop to damaging hard disk, battery and much more. Always keep laptop in cooler environment like in the shade.

Make Use of Laptop Cooler or Separate Cooling Fan

Separate cooling fan and laptop coolers is to be used when your laptop needs additional cooling. It is important to choose the right cooler, for which you'll have to understand the flow of air from your laptop. If your laptop suck-in air from bottom, choose a cooler which blows air into the laptop. A cooler which sucks air away will not add to laptop cooling and relatively cause a more rapid overheating.

Place your Laptop on Flat-Hard Surface or Lap Desk

Make use of lap desk or flat-hard surface when placing your
laptop on uneven surface like thighs, bed or blanket or pillows. When placed on uneven surfaces, cooling reduces, heat builds up, temperature of bottom surface increases thereby transferring heat to your legs. Using lap desk or something as simple as tray as laptop-holder will create enough breathing space to prevent laptop from overheating.

If you have any more suggestions to provide, please feel free.

Monday 2 August 2010

13 Best Android Tips to Improve Device Performance

Read: How to Play Same Music File on Multiple Android iOS Devices at Once
The Performance and touch response of android smartphone will slow down as time passes with its usage. It's the OS which is causing lag in every task, which is supposed to be lighter and quicker but as you stuff gizmo with bunch of irrelevant and unnecessary documents, media collections, and apps offering not ample roam for OS to breathe resulting device suffocation. Its akin squeezing an individual with tons of work despite of not capable to handle at once.

 Why device slows down?

  1. Stuffed with tons of apps
  2. Device and external storage becomes (nearly) jam-packed
  3. Numerous background processes (apps)
  4. Unnecessary illogical changes made in device settings.
  5. Heavy theme on home screen.
  6. Installing unnecessary heavy widgets.
Below are few tips shared which are verified to increase performance considerably:
Read: 11 Key Features any New Smartphone Must Have
Read: How to Turn Android Phone Camera into Webcam for Laptop via IP Webcam

1. Listen to phone

Every android phone has some limitations which you need to observe, understand and accept. For instance, assuming 1GB game will work uninterruptedly on tablets or smartphones having 1.5GB or beyond RAM. Device bogs down when fraught with lot of hefty, resource-starving apps and packed storage thereby degrading your performance. Figure out the root cause and remove it from device.

2. High speed flash drive

Transfer and saving speed of data in internal/external memory card should be as fastest as possible. For instance, capturing and saving instant images from camera or transmitting media archives, docs from PC or notebook and such read/write activities are done extremely fast by class 10, pro, ultra, evo series flash drives in ascending order compared to lower class drives. Needless to say: high speed equals better performance.

3. Upgrade apps

App developers update their software frequently after receiving feedback from users. Makers fix bugs, enhance features, compatibility and include new options in their newer version to enrich users experience. You don't have to repeatedly check for updates merely enable auto-update option app will automatically install updates whenever available.

4. Prevent live wallpapers

Live wall papers might be fascinating you but how often. In the end gadget suffers from rapid battery drain, unnecessary RAM usage, and slower performance. Use them when not many apps are installed, no lag experienced.

5. Upgrade to the latest OS

Updating to the newest firmware is paramount than other tweaks. Every OS or app ought to be maintained up-to-date if you want consistent impressive performance, and inter-connectivity with upcoming features, apps and devices. Nowadays most applications are compatible with android 4.0 or above OS gizmos.

6. Uninstall needless apps

In android smartphone or tablet any app once installed occupies some storage and runs in background always consuming needless RAM. Any benefits in keeping apps which are barely utilized? Remove unneeded softwares but preserve its apk file within device (for future requirement) which will free-up some space and decrease the burden on processor. To improve performance reduce number of apps running in background either by uninstalling or disabling them. Install lightweight software which need less storage space and RAM compared to other available apps. Install apps, transfer media files in external drive and keep internal storage free as possible.

7. Disable useless apps

Disabling (through settings>application manager) is entirely different from uninstalling applications. Disabling is like maintaining app inactive in background which can be enabled later instantly. This will lessen the burden on processor thereby enhancing performance, touch response. It doesn't vacate storage as file stays installed within device but restricted from entering into it, to use enable again.

8. Reduce animation scale 

Animation scale is the density of animation effect while you switch from one task to another and by default is set to 1. To visualize the transformation jump to settings>> developer options>>Transition animation scale and choose any superior scale say 10x. Now switch between home screen, other options, tabs, apps to visualize the fade in-out effect. The slow motion might fascinate you but it consumes lot of time to reach destination, reduce to 0.5x or turn off. This will save time, battery, improve performance, quick touch response. Do the same with window animation scale which is above transition scale.

9. Have fewer widgets

Widgets are constantly working in background you cannot disable them like apps. Folks use widgets to get weather conditions, swiftly accessing WiFi, GPS, and app shortcuts, fancy home screen. Instead of stuffing device with decorative widgets install which are indeed helpful. Widgets are prime reason for sluggish touch response to avoid as much as you can.

10. Turn off synchronizing feature

Sync feature is the best one for linking your online accounts with smartphone or tablet (contacts). But linking all accounts is not desirable. Sync accounts based on urgencies, for instance (office) mails, bank (app) notifications, LinkedIn and other accounts whose instant updates are imperative to you, productivity related. Whereas sync Facebook, Twitter, Viber accounts which if accessed anytime manually won't affect your day's efficiency. Why to unnecessarily sync such accounts which reduces smartphone performance, work rate because after every certain interval it will check for updates in account draining power rapidly too. The more account you sync, that many processes run in background affecting current ongoing operation.

11. Use RAM booster

Kill background processes manually or through external app like Clean Master or task killer when you're about to run a heavy app, multitasking. Preset settings to repeatedly kill needless processes, apps in background based on priorities. Clean ad junk, cache data with cache cleaner app.

12. Reset settings

Apart from above tweaks try factory rest because you might have altered couple of settings as per convenience with time. Also, after prolong use stuffs get messy inside device thus factory reset will bring it to clean state and default settings. Afore performing this function it is recommended to backup all vital data. This will definitely boost performance to some extent.
Read: How to Clean Your Computer/Laptop Keyboard for free
Read: How to Clean and Fix Scratches on CD & DVD

13. Root the device (Not recommended)

Above are some tips which anyone can perform, however the person having comprehensive technical knowledge of android working and settings can try to root the smartphone which is highly risky and not recommended. Device warranty will get invalid if you root completely, nevertheless unroot it to reinstate warranty.

If you have some more tips which can boost android performance kindly share in comment section.
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