Cut the Cord- Use That Laptop Without Plugging In

This guy worked like this for an hour so he could be plugged in

This guy worked like this for an hour so he could be plugged in. He was barely able to walk from working hunched over. His battery was full when he arrived, and he had no further appointments for the day.

Laptops are useful things. You can throw them in a bag and pull them out almost anywhere when you need to get work done. You see people using them almost everywhere these days, from coffee shops to restaurants. They are mobile computers after all, and the key word in that phrase for me is mobile. One of the main features of laptops that makes them so mobile is the ability to use them unplugged. They have batteries, and while all day battery life is still largely a pipe dream most notebooks will run for a good portion of the day. That’s why I regularly get amused when I see laptops in use, they are almost always plugged into an outlet. I have to wonder what the point is to always use a tethered laptop?

Now before you sound off that I get to play with lots of notebooks, and that I am overlooking the fact that battery life deteriorates over time, listen to what I have to say. I don’t work mobile as much as I use to, but my observation of how mobile workers always want to plug in was garnered over years. In my past life I would work all over the place; it was not unusual to see me working in four or five different locations on a given day.

I never plugged in my laptop, even with that mobile lifestyle, while outside of my own office. I always carried a spare battery in my gear bag but no power adapter. Truth is I seldom had to swap the second battery into the notebook. I found with aggressive power management I could get a solid 4+ hours of constant use on any notebook I was carrying. Today’s notebooks can usually get 5 or 6 hours of solid use on a charge, and almost no one is using the computer for that long on a given day. Not outside the office, anyway.

I have observed mobile workers for years and it is uncommon to see one working on a laptop in a mobile venue without plugging into the nearest available outlet. I have asked hundreds of these workers why they don’t use the laptop unplugged and almost always get the same answer. They are afraid they might be in a situation where there are no power outlets and they want to make sure the battery is full. That makes sense but it means that most of these folks never, ever use the laptop unplugged. They are too busy always topping off the battery.

The reality is most of us are rarely very far from power outlets. They have them in coffee shops and just about every venue a laptop is commonly used. I have attended countless meetings where four or five laptops were in use, and every single one of them was plugged into an outlet. It often made for amusing cable clutter, and I’ve seen people trip over them. Most of these meetings lasted less than two hours so I have little doubt that all of these laptops could have lasted the duration on battery power handily.

My conversations with laptop users makes me think that most have the unreasonable (to me) fear of running the battery dry. They fear the rare situation when they have to work unplugged but the well is dry. It’s a real fear but to me it’s not a good reason to plug my laptop in, 99.99% of the time. Just in case. How about you? Do you always plug in, or do you always work untethered?

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