How to Make Your toshiba satellite a15 battery Last Longer

laptop battery life is getting better on most new laptops with double digits, or at least 8 hours, becoming the new standard to be judged for portables and netbooks. But what if your notebook only has 2-4 hours of battery life? We’ve rounded up a few tips to stretch your battery life and make it a bit easier to recharge when you need it.

First off is Aerofoil, which Netbooknews brought to our attention. This small program is great for extending the life of your toshiba satellite a15 battery and Netbooknews claims it can add an additional 25% to your battery life all by disabling battery draining Windows Aero effects automatically. After installing the small app and setting it up, anytime you unplug it will turn off the Windows Aero effects like transparency and Peek; which look good but drain your battery!

Second, Business Net has 5 tips to extend your satellite a15 battery life. Most of these are simple steps that make your battery better by exercising and taking care of your battery, all of which make for better battery life. Examples include keeping you notebook cool, not charging constantly and running your battery down and recharging it to full once or twice a month.

Finally, when you are recharging you don’t want your day ruined because your cat thought the power cord was a toy and pulled your notebook to the floor in a sickening crash! Mac owners have long enjoyed the convenience of a MagSafe adapter that stays put with magnets but easily pulls away if needed but everyone else is left demagnetized. Thankfully LifeHacker found a great DIY Guide for a Magnetic laptop power ac adapter on Instructables that will let anyone add a MagSafe power adapter, that looks good, with just a little bit of work.

Remember, take care of your battery and it will take care of you!

Toshiba x305 adapter can not fully charge the laptop battery

Does your Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q701, or some other Toshiba POS randomly shut off and not fully charge the laptop battery? This is apparently a very common problem with these notebooks. When I had to fix my friend’s laptop I searched all over the internet for a solution. I found quite a few forum threads and laptop reviews discussing the issue but no one actually fixed it themselves. Lazy bastards. Most of these folks were having them sent in for warranty work and having the entire main boards replaced. This is a ridiculous waste of money for someone. I did see an ad for some computer repair place who was charging $200 to fix these, which is a total rip off. They were replacing the jack (claiming $20 just for the part!!) which is not necessary (at least not with this one). Well, I am really cheap and I didn’t want to deal with the time or BS of having it shipped (the warranty is expired anyway), so I fixed it. Cliff’s notes at bottom.

The power led on the front would flicker when the Toshiba x305 adapter was plugged in. I could wiggle the power cord and it would change the nature of the flickering. Sometimes it would stay on continuously and sometimes it would shut off depending on the wiggling. This behavior had the obvious side effects of shutting the computer off and never really charging the battery. Oh how irritating.

At first I thought it was the power cord. I mean I could wiggle the cord and it made changes to the flickering, so why not? After testing it with the volt meter it seemed to be good, good enough to not spend ~$85 on a new power cord. What else could it be?

The x305 adapter jack in the machine turned out to be the culprit. Well, sort of. Technically it was the connection between the jack and the main board. Yeah, just a stupid connection. Not the whole motherboard like the corporate “customer service” reps want you to think. See, the jack has the positive connection coming out of the back and directly into the board with a little weak solder joint keeping the jack from rocking back and forth. When the laptop is subjected to normal amounts of power cord wiggling it breaks the weak joint and screws up power delivery. You can test this by plugging in the laptop and pushing the end of the cord (where it goes into the computer) in different directions while watching the green power light. Mine broke mostly on the top joint and so the light would be a solid green if I pushed the cord end UP (thereby pushing the connection back together), and would totally turn off when I pushed the cord end down.

You can view the backside of the jack by popping the little panel thats above the laptop keyboard (it also goes over the screen hinges):

You can plug the computer in and wiggle the cord end to see if there is a visible crack. Mine had a visible crack when i pushed the cord end down. The picture above, however, was taken after I fixed it, so I have no pics of the crack.

Ok, so now you have to fix it. This is extremely easy. If you have ever soldered, you can do it. Take the laptop apart. I used this guide here which is really good. Just get the main board out so you can solder on the bottom of the jack. Once the board is out you just solder the bottom of the + terminal of the jack (the part of the jack that goes into the middle of the cord). Then solder the top. I tried to make the top solder joint as beefy as possible so it takes a while before the problem happens again. i.e. solder the circled terminal on top and the corresponding bottom terminal:

Power stuff on X305-Q701 went to shit. Wasn’t the power cord. Was the + side jack connection to the main board. Take apart laptop, take out main board, re-solder on the bottom AND on the top of + connection. Put it back together. Enjoy the not-sucking laptop.

Laptop accessories for your trip

This section will help you to prepare for your next trip abroad with your laptop accessories - everything you may need from finding a roaming internet access provider to guarding against computer theft while on the road.

Before you begin your road trip, there are a number of issues you need to address.

Toshiba Tecra 9100 AC Adapter 75W 15V 5A

First, there are hardware issues. You will need the correct laptop power ac adapter so you can plug in your laptop when you get to your destination (and points in between). There are 9 different power plugs in use around the globe. In addition. your laptop may not be prepared to handle the 240VAC power you will encounter in many countries, so you may need a step-down transformer.

Next, you will have to deal with the telephone jacks which do not conform with the standard RJ-11 phone jack we all take for granted while traveling around the U.S. There are 39 different telephone jacks in use worldwide. You must have a telephone adapter to handle each of the phone jacks where you plan to travel. There is also a problem of trying to hook up your laptop computer to a digital phone line – that will blow your modem and then you can not use your computer. A special digital signal tester is available to test the line to make certain you are trying to connect to a phone line that will handle analog signals you computer’s modem can handle.

Then there are the software issues. Laptops manufactured for use in the US have modems installed that do not recognize the dial tones used by most other countries. You will have to learn how to set your modem commands so your computer will ignore the strange dial tones and allow you to dial manually. Otherwise, your computer will not be able to function with your modem trying to recognize the strange dial tones.

Then there is a phenomenon called “tax impulsing”. This is a condition that exists in certain European countries phone systems to measure the amount of time you are on the phone. It is a regular “beep” on the phone line – we normally ignore it during voice calls – that will cause your laptop to disconnect. There is a tax impulse filter so you can have normal communication using your laptop.

TOSHIBA SATELLITE A15-S127 Battery 4400mAh

May be you can also take a additionl laptop battery for you trip.It ’s can let your laotps online longer than your only have one battery.