When you’re on a laptop, battery drain is always a concern. Obviously, you want your battery to last as long as possible so that you can get as much work done as you can (or have as much fun as you can).
Apple’s OSX 10.9 Mavericks has a new feature that I use every day. When you click on the battery indicator in the upper right menu icons, the drop down pane now shows you which of your open programs is sucking the life out of your battery. In the example at right, I’m currently using Safari, BusyCal, and SnagIt. I finished with AirDisplayHelper, however, when I finished using my iPad as an external monitor. Mouseposé I only use when I’m teaching.
Both of these two programs are unnecessarily draining my battery. I can manually go to the app to Quit Mouseposé, but AirDisplayHelper is a background process that doesn’t have a specific program associated with it. Since I can’t Quit it, I instead can click on the name on the list, it opens Activity Monitor, a utility on your computer that helps you understand why your computer may be slowing down. From here you can click on the name on the list, then use the button in Activity Monitor’s upper left corner to Force Quit if necessary.
This welcome tool will help you be a road warrior on your laptop.
