Ways to save battery life

[kjc35]

i just wanted to see if anyone out there had some good methods of squeezing out some more battery life (i.e.) cutting out unnecessary components. Right now I'm using a 2.5" HDD but I'm not sure if it'll make a huge difference compared to say a USB flash drive or SSD. I know the laptop monitor sucks a lot of juice too, so there's no way around that, I assume.
Thanks for the help

 

[Aurelio]

Replacing the HDD with a SSD or a USB drive is definitely going to save you some battery life

 

[cheese]

Definitely make custom regulators, they're generally much more efficient than stock ones.

 

[kjc35]

Okay I'll see about getting a flash drive for storage. Would having a 4S battery make the regulator circuitry much different? Right now I have no need to trim the Wii unless it'd cut down on power consumption

 

[cheese]

The S rating is just how much power can be drawn, not an efficiency rating. The regulators will work exactly the same all the way down to the minimum amount of power they need from the battery. derp

 

[kjc35]

Great, and can I use 08080s for all four voltages?

 

[cheese]

Yep!

 

[kjc35]

fantastic thanks for the help cheese and aurelio!

 

[Aurelio]

The S rating is just how much power can be drawn, not an efficiency rating. The regulators will work exactly the same all the way down to the minimum amount of power they need from the battery.

That's the C rating
4S means having 4 cells in series and yeah, they are enough for the internal regulators (whose efficiency shouldn't be that much different from using pth08080s, but I did no measure on those)

 

[kjc35]

So would using custom regulators really make a huge difference? I can always use them for another Wii portable later if it's only about 10-20 minutes