Mobile Help For Your Macbook: Disable Features To Save Battery Life And Increase Resolution

I can never get enough battery life.  I can never get enough resolution in my 15" Powerbook or 13" unibody Macbook.  and for my fellow mobile Apple readers, I'm sure you're in the same boat.  But these quests for the two Holy Grails of mobile computing marches on.

There are two applications that I think you'll consider using that can help you squeeze more out of your Macbooks in terms of battery life and screen resolution.  Both of these applications are free and come from Cynosurex.

The first one is Spotlight Manager .  I find Spotlight very useful but I almost use it exclusively to launch applications.  Nevertheless, it does run in the background and so it takes up resources.  Spotlight Manager allows the user to turn Spotlight on or off during one's day through mobile work.

I don't know what the resource savings from having Spotlight off will translate into extra minutes from the battery but every minute helps.

Also, you'll want to check out MagicMenu.  Having the menu bar at the top of the screen is helpful.  We use it a lot and Apple figure it needs to stay there for us to easily access.  But there are some instances where I like to have a full screen and I'm quite ap with shortcuts.  There is where MagicMenu comes in.

MM is an utility that allows the user to hide the menu bar give mobile warriors extra real estate.  What do we get back?  5%?  Not bad at all.  What's very cool about MagicMenu is the customizability - it allows the user to toggle the menu on or off depending on what application you want to use.  

I am sure mobile OS X users will find both applications very useful.  I think the developers for these applications should bundle them together into one app to make it easier for folks to use.  After all, this is OS X and we want Mac specific experiences.

Note:  Please read the instructions carefully.  For instance, you'll have to enable Spotlight again should you decide to rid yourself of Spotlight Manager or you might find yourself without Spotlight.

Another Note:  If you find the applications useful, support the developer.  While these are freeware and some of them are happy to help out the community, we can still show them appreciation for their work.  Send him a coupon for a beer or something.