Many gamers try to squeeze better performance from their computers.  This can also breathe some new life in older hardware by making the notebook able to play newer games.  Overclocking is an option.

Overclocking is the process of making your computer running faster than its original specifications.  You can get better performance out of your machine at the cost of more heat, and the reduction of its operating life.  You can think of overclocking as similar to the race cars in the Fast and the Furious:  when they add NOS to their motor, their cars increase speed, but at the same time they may blow the engine.  Many overclockers feel that the rewards outweigh the risks.

Overclocking laptop components is even more dangerous than desktop machines.  Usually notebooks are already running hotter than their desktop counterparts and they do not handle the extra heat very well.  In this case either extra cooling is required, either a custom solution or using a notebook cooling pad.  Also, if you do manage to damage any internal component in the laptop, be prepared for the large repair bill:  the components inside the notebook are more expensive than a desktop machine.

If you do decide to try overclocking your notebook, try out the following utility:  Speedfan.  It will help you to watch the temperature on your computer and let you know when it is running too hot.  Hopefully that will help save your computer from damage.

I had the honour of going to a client's house to do some work on their website.  As you all know my laptop is a little old (about three years old) and I was demonstrating to the client how to upload their photos to their stock photography agency website. Needless to say, though my battery meter said I had over an hour remaining, my laptop battery decided to die.

Thinking about it, I had just read an article about laptop batteries and their expected lives. According to research a laptop battery should be good for about three hundred charges or so and you can expect the maximum battery life to decrease by 1 % per month. So in my case, I should expect only about 64% of the original charge (or roughly an hour or so).

Checking out the battery calibration utility, we can see that my 4400 mAh battery only has 2935 mAh capacity. Breaking out the trusty calculator, that leaves me at 66.7% of the original capacity.

Anyways, if I had just looked at the battery configuration utility, I would have known what to expect. We will look at battery calibration in a later article.
 

If you are like me, you are using a "slightly" older notebook, in my case it is three years old.  I just recently purchased a Samsung 20" LCD monitor that I wanted to hook up my laptop to for when I am working at home.  I hooked the notebook up to the display, installed the drivers and to my dismay, the notebook would not show the optimum resolution for my monitor. 

So, I went online looking for new drivers for my video card (in my case it is an ATI 345M IGP).  To my dismay, I was unable to find any official drivers for the card, so I was forced to look for non-traditional options.  I found two places where I could get custom drivers and I had the opportunity to try them out.

The first drivers I tried were the Omega drivers from Omegadrivers.net.  The install went fine and I tried them out for a few days.  I was impressed by the number of resolution options I was given - more than you may need, but basically you could hook up any monitor, projector, or tv to the laptop and the resolution that you would need was available.  Also, fo ryou gamers, you can install an overclocking utility to get the most out of your video card.  My only complaint is that sometimes you could see that the notebook was visually having problems displaying the correct resolution (at 1400 x 1050).  It was at this point I decided that I would try the other site I came accross.

I came across another website DriverHaeven.net.  What they offered is a mod tool that would modify the regular desktop drivers so that they would work with my notebook.  Installation was a breeze: I just had to download the most recent Catalyst drivers and then run the mod tool.  The advantage of this method was that you can use the regular catalyst control panel provided by ATI.  Aslo, I find that the drivers do a better job showing the resolution on my external monitor.

An upgrade to your video card driver will allow you to work better with bigger resolutions (for example with an external monitor) and may let you play some newer games.  On the other hand, even with a driver update, if your machine is a little older, you will still be limited by the hardware that is in your notebook.  So what I would suggest is try it out - if it doesn't work to your likeing, you can always reinstall your original video card driver that came with your notebook.

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