There are many posts related to laptop’s battery life on the net if you google “Laptop battery’s life” and then a recent news article on my feed provided the news of the computerworld on the same topic again. Well obviously i thought as these might be different but most of them was on my mind and a 4 page long article influenced me to summarize the points so that it will help somebody in hurry as is the case with the internet users like me.
For a longer life of battery.
1. Don’t Run It Down to Empty
2. Keep It Cool(Heat breaks down the battery, and reduces its overall life).
3. Never work with the laptop on pillows or cushions.
4. Give It a Rest, If you’re going to be working exclusively on AC power for a week or more, remove the battery first. (This will not apply on Nepal due to excessive load-shedding).
5. An unused battery loses power over time, and you don’t want all the power to drain away, so remove it when it’s at least half-charged.
6. Only remove or reinsert the battery when the laptop is completely off or hibernating.Not following this will crash your system and possibly damage your hardware.
7. Don’t even think to refrigerate your battery to keep it cool 
. Instead, store it in a dry place at room temperature.
Longer Life Between Charges
1. Dim your screen. Keep it as dim as you can comfortably read it.
2. Shut off unneeded hardware, Turn off your Blue-tooth, and if you’re not using the Internet, turn off your Wi-Fi receiver, as well. Don’t use an external mouse or other device, CD/DVD’s (instead copy it on hard-disk-Video playback from a hard drive, is less taxing). And muting the PC’s sound system not only saves power.
3. Avoid multitasking.Run as few programs as you can get away with. If possible, stick to the one application (word processor, browser, or whatever) you’re currently using, plus your anti-virus and firewall in the background.
Software Developers might not be comfortable without multitasking.
4. Avoid multimedia Save chores like photo editing and watching old Daily Show videos for when you have AC power. And if you must listen to music, use your iPod (or similar device).
5. Adding RAM saves battery life if you are sure to have multitask.
More RAM means less hard drive access, and the hard drive uses a lot of electricity. But RAM uses electricity as well, and unless you’re doing a lot of multitasking (not a good idea when you’re on battery power), more RAM won’t reduce hard drive use.
Besides the core programming knowledge on any language there are lots of technologies that needs to be known in order to develop applications may it be desktop or web apps, to be stay connected with peers or colleagues. List goes like
Version Control System(VCS) Tools
1. Subversion(SVN) by Collabnet Details
SVN Clients
a. Tortoise SVN for windows.
b. SmartSVN for Ubuntu
2. GIT is Fast Version Control system developed by Linus Torvald which is created natively for Linux and now is also available for windows at http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/
GIT is very good at command, and IDEs are also integrating it well like IntelliJ Idea.
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
1. Netbeans supports Ajax, C/C++, Databases, Debugger, Desktop Editor, Groovy, GUI Builder, Hudson, Java EE, JavaFS, Java ME, Java SE, JavaScript, Kenai, Maven, Mobile, PHP, Profiler, Python, Refactor, REST, Rich Client Platform, Ruby, SOAP, Web.
2. Eclipse a lightweight IDE which has plugins for various programming languages.
3. IntelliJ Idea very intelligent IDE.
4. Microsoft Visual Studio windows based IDE.
5. Spring Source ToolSuite eclipse based IDE for best result on Spring Framework (Spring based project).
Client-Side Debugging Tools
1. Firebug (An Addon for Firefox) a very good Debugging Tool.
2. Web Developer (Also an Addon for Firefox).
3. IE Developer Toolbar for Internet Explorer.
JavaScript/AJAX Frameworks (Knowledge of any one of the following)
1. Dojo
2. Google AJAXSLT
3. JSON/JSON-RPC
4. DWR
5. Java BluePrints
6. Ext JS (javascript library)
7. jQuery – New Wave Javascript
8. Prototype
9. script.aculo.us
10. Spry Framework for Ajax
11. ZK
12. Google Web Toolkit
13. JSON-RPC-JAVA
Online backup Sync and Sharing
1. Dropbox can also be used for Version Control as it uses SVN internally for managing files/folders. This article could be useful for using dropbox with GIT for version Control.
Instant Messaging Tools
1. MSN Messenger(For hotmail/msn account)
2. Google Talk (for Google Account)
3. Yahoo Messenger (For Yahoo Account)
4. Digsby supports many accounts of different vendors.
5. Pidgin which also supports many accounts of different vendors.
Here the list is long, so depends on your choice.
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn Clients
1. TweetDeck
2. Yoono Addons for Firefox
3. Echofon currently only for twitter at the time of writing.
Here the list is long, so depends on your choice.
Mail Clients
1. MS Outlook Express
2. Thunderbird
3. Evolution Mail/Calendar which comes by default on Ubuntu
RSS/Feed/News Reader
1. Google Reader
2. Thunderbird can also be used as Reader.
Graphical tool for Database Development
1. Oracle Developer
2. MySQL workbench
3. SQL Tools
Remote Desktop Viewer
1. TiemView
2. Vinagre comes by default on Ubuntu
3. Tight VNC
4. Real VNC
SSH Clients
SSH Clients
Comparision of SSH Clients
FTP Clients
Comparision of FTP Clients
Text Editing Tools
1. Geany
2. Notepad++
3. Textpad
Comparision of various Text Editing Tools
File Comparision/Merge Tools
1. WinMerge
2. KDiff3
3. Kompare
Comparision of File Comparision Tools
Online Bookmarking Tools
1. Delicious
2. Google Bookmark
This is small attempt to recollect additional technologies needed for any developers regardless of the programming language they will be developing. In my opinion at least one in all of the above criteria (Bold and Underlined) are needed for the developers for developing software may it be desktop/web applications besides core programming language. Comments for additional helping technologies are anticipated.