I trade a lot from my laptop, and need to maximize my battery life. Should I allocate MORE memory to the app or LESS in order for it to use less CPU? It is currently at the default 32mb min / 768mb max. P.S. I already have ThinkOrSwim to only pull realtime data every 15 seconds (I don't day trade so this delay is fine with me).
I carry 8 extra batteries for 2 trading laptops and one laptop for email. I believe the display is what draws much of energy, so I have mine set to 5 minutes then goes off, save a little, but face it, the batteries tend to get weaken by use, any time I can plug in, I will. They never said mobile was going to weigh little or be easy.
That's my problem, Mac's don't have removable batteries so I guess I will have to start carrying an external around... OR get a new laptop! Something without any power but at least a day of battery life would be nice (if its even possible).
If you are using a laptop with Windows, you might google "windows mobility center". There are three Windows laptop settings: Balanced, Power Saver and High Performance. Keeping my laptop on Power Saver doubles my battery life. Thinkorswim realtime quotes work fine on Power Saver. Realtime quotes need good wifi not power.
Setting the Windows display to "night" helps a lot to save battery juice but the surrounding light must already be dim. Setting to “night” is not the same as turning the brightness down. This is "in addition too”. The brightness can still be adjusted after setting to Night mode. Right-click an empty space on the Desktop then select: Graphics Options >>> Profiles >>> Display Profiles >>> Night Googling around a bit will show other ways to do this. I believe there is a way to do it on the MAC also.
It may be possible to buy a bigger battery. For example, my HP Envy 17 battery comes in three sizes. They all fit into the same slot on my computer. The bigger ones just stick out farther is all. I have all three sizes. By far the best one is the 9 cell battery. Bigger is not always better. Bigger is heavier though. HP Envy 17 Battery, 6 cell 4400mAh 10.8V HP Envy 17 Battery, 9 cell 6600mAh 10.8v HP Envy 17 Battery, 12 cell 8800mAh 10.8v
This demonstrates you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how computers work: (a) On modern operating systems, the decision of how much memory to use is generally best left to the operating system (b) Manually tweaking memory is not going to have any effect on CPU How about you look at the low hanging fruit first ? i.e. The number one consumer of battery is staring you in the face. Yes really. Ok, I'll spell it out. It's the monitor. Set it to the minimum brightness you need. If you're stepping away from the screen, turn the brightness right down to zero (or however low your laptop will go). The number two consumer of battery ? Radios. Got bluetooth ? Not using it ? Turn it off. Got 3G/4G/mobile data ? Not using it ? Turn it off. Got Wifi ? Can you use a nearby CAT5/CAT6 cable instead (e.g. in a hotel room) ? Great. Use that, turn WiFi off. Number three ? USB Using your laptop to charge your phone/tablet ? Stop it ! Got anything bus-powered that's more than a keyboard/mouse plugged in ? Take it out. Number four ? Hard drive. If you're on good old-fashioned spinning metal, swap it for an SSD. No need to power that motor to spin the platters ! Once you've dealt with the low hanging fruit, then and only then should you start looking at your software options .... Explore your operating system's energy saving settings If you're on a windows box, look at the BIOS level energy savings settings Running bloatware and other rubbish in the background ? Kill it Un-necessary CPU hungry software open ? Kill it.
My only question is why are you so far away from electricity, for the part of life you trying to use the computer but when you don't need to use it. Just seems like a odd situation.