Laptop & Long Plane Ride

SAAER45

SAAER45

New Member
I'm looking for some opinions here... I've got a long flight lined up for me Wednesday and I'm trying to think of what to put on my laptop before I leave for the plane ride. Obviously, there is no internet access on a Boeing 747 and I can't do energy intensive things like COD2 or else I will use my battery up too quickly. If you were in my shoes, what apps would you make sure your laptop had for a long plane ride?

John
 
I always enjoy some downloadable basic puzzle games. Something that you can play for a long time, is enjoyable, and wont suck any battery.
 
If I were in your shoes, I would go to my local Wal-Mart and get an AC Car adaptor (25$) that comes with a plane adaptor. I got mine from Walmart and it has one. Works perfect!
 
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evanscnce said:
If I were in your shoes, I would go to my local Wal-Mart and get an AC Car adaptor (25$) that comes with a plane adaptor. I got mine from Walmart and it has one. Works perfect!
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Good suggestion, but the airline I am traveling on does not have power ports on their seats.
 
-Dont put the laptop on your legs when in flight. The heat from the laptop will be absorbed into your legs and heats up the Laptop. This will cause more energy consumption. Try to put it on the tray in front of you.

Bring some dvd's and noise canceling headsets.
 
Lets assume hes stuck with a single battery with a few hours or normal life, and no other means of powering it. Im in a similar situation next weekend, since were going to Florida!

I've been thinking exactly the same thing, since I could play some games, but then I would only get 2 hours max from the battery. So I would include a few short videos on the hard drive (not on a CD, since that uses too much power). You could also get some low-end games like Age of Empires, which you can play just fine on lowest CPU and GPU settings. Or you can download a few eBooks or online articles to read later, or just fool around on the computer figuring some things out.
 
When I flew to the UK last summer I brought a few movies and headphones and I was entertained the entire flight.
 
download simple flash games, i suggest escape the bomb, bowman 2, sea of fire, tailspin, tanks all from addicting games. other games like crimson room, white room, Viridian room and other games like that.
 
Whenever I'm on a plane I eat what they give me and sleep. Doesn't matter how long the flight is, I can always sleep nearly the whole flight. Been to scotland 6 or 7 times to visit family(7-9 hour flight, jamaica a few times(2.5 hour flight), dom. rep once(3 hour flight), vegas almost every year now(6 hour flight), australia visiting family twice(26hour flights! :eek: ). I guess its the drone of the engines, I don't know. I always have to make sure someone wakes me when we land:D
 
bldgengineer said:
Whenever I'm on a plane I eat what they give me and sleep. Doesn't matter how long the flight is, I can always sleep nearly the whole flight. Been to scotland 6 or 7 times to visit family(7-9 hour flight, jamaica a few times(2.5 hour flight), dom. rep once(3 hour flight), vegas almost every year now(6 hour flight), australia visiting family twice(26hour flights! :eek: ). I guess its the drone of the engines, I don't know. I always have to make sure someone wakes me when we land:D
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Wow, you get around.. I've always wanted to travel the world, still stuck in America though...
 
Get an IGO, you can get them here

http://www.radioshack.com/search/index.jsp?kwCatId=&kw=igo&origkw=igo&sr=1


These are pretty cool if you have alot of different things you need to charge or use. When I worked at Radioshack we sold tons of these things and the minute we sold them we knew that atleast half of those tons would be returned when they got home. Not cause they sucked just because people rented them for a few days then returned them. So I would so go pick one up and if you like it keep it if not go and return it, because after all the sales associates are expecting you to return the thing :).

Make sure of 2 things your flight has power where you are sitting, I have been on many flights were there was no power source to plug into. Second if you decide to pick up an Igo make SURE you know the EXACT model of your laptop and any other electronics you may want to use with it, because Shack guys WILL lie to you to get the sale out and I have seen cases where getting the wrong one fried some electronics.
 
bldgengineer said:
Whenever I'm on a plane I eat what they give me and sleep. Doesn't matter how long the flight is, I can always sleep nearly the whole flight. Been to scotland 6 or 7 times to visit family(7-9 hour flight, jamaica a few times(2.5 hour flight), dom. rep once(3 hour flight), vegas almost every year now(6 hour flight), australia visiting family twice(26hour flights! :eek: ). I guess its the drone of the engines, I don't know. I always have to make sure someone wakes me when we land:D
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Wow you fly alot. I've only many times but only 3 times out the country and that was to the UK, Australia and St. Barts.
 
In Windows, under Power Options, you can change the power scheme to conserve energy. Here are the two relevant ones:

• The Portable/Laptop power scheme minimizes the use of power to conserve your battery, but adjusts to your processing needs so that the system speed is not sacrificed.

• The Max Battery power scheme minimizes power use but does not adjust as your processing demands change. You should use Max Battery only in situations that require minimal processing, such as reading documents and taking notes in a meeting.

For basic computing stuff such as flash games like Bejeweled, do you guys think I would be ok with “Max Battery" or would there be a noticeable drop in performance for those kinds of tasks?
 
Another option is this: you can always call the airline up and ask what kind of power options they have on the plane for things like a laptop computer, I have seen car lighter like outlets before in boeings and airbuses(of course I was bumped to business and 1st class, I can't remember seeing anything in regular).

Or you could always try something like this http://store.sundancesolarcorp.com/xapo150.html might be a little hard to explain to security though:D
 
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SAAER45 said:
For basic computing stuff such as flash games like Bejeweled, do you guys think I would be ok with “Max Battery" or would there be a noticeable drop in performance for those kinds of tasks?
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I'd like to amend that post; I stupidly forget to mention the specs of the computer... It is a Pentium 4 (2.0GHz) with 512 MB of RAM
 
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