When you're almost out of juice and reach for your laptop's power cord, you just see two things: your power-draining thousand-dollar hunk of metal (couldn't it keep a three-hour charge last year?) and the wire that's gonna give you the 30 minutes' charge that you need.
What you don't realize is that not all parts of a laptop are created equal. Most of the power it sucks up—to the tune of 43 percent—goes to just one part... so what is it? And as for conserving the little charge we get, is it better to power off and re-boot or let your laptop sleep or hibernate? Both of these questions answered after the jump...
