I'm using a 2 year old 15" AMD laptop running Windows 8, and its battery life is not as long as the brand new ultrabooks for sure.
In the place I'm currently working I don't have access to a power outlet, so I just purchased an extended battery from Ebay.
With proper brightness setting, power saving mode, periodic cleaning and turning off the unnecessary software I can have 4-5 hrs of juice.
Question: when I'm tracking software for system resource consumption I'm primarily focusing on CPU usage but I have no idea about the software with 0% CPU usage but relatively high memory usage. Should I try to keep my memory clean to have even more battery life?
PS: I have more than enough physical memory which is 8 GB so non-active software with memory consumption doesn't create extra burden for me in terms of performance.
Best Answer
Memory is a negligible factor, because it uses very little power (we're talking less than 3 watts per stick in a laptop).
And in fact, if you have a HDD, more memory usage would theoretically increase battery performance, because there is less HDD activity when memory is used as cache, instead.
The most power hungry components are ones that generate heat (CPU and GPU as they process information) and those that generate physical motion (the fans and any hard drives). Memory tends to generate relatively little heat (and obviously no physical motion).
The first steps I would take to reduce battery consumption would be to replace the HDD with an SSD, get a new battery and maybe replace the fans with those of better quality (harder to do on a laptop). Also abstain from any GPU or CPU intensive tasks. Any efforts beyond that are adding immeasurably small amounts of battery life.