Daily Tech Bits

18 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

If you are like me, you spend a lot time working on your laptop computer. And don’t get me wrong, I love my laptop but I do have one complaint… the extremely short battery life. It always seems to lose power at the worst possible time.

The next time you find yourself praying that your battery will last long enough to finish a project, try the following tips:

1. Optimize Power Settings - The display and hard disk on your laptop are the two biggest consumers of battery power. Most laptops now come with a couple of predefined power schemes to help you extend your battery’s life. Be sure to select a “Max Power” scheme to save as much power as possible.
2. Dim Your Screen - The brighter your screen, the more power you are using. If you can’t live with a dimmer screen at least set it to automatically dim after a few minutes of non-use.
3. Remove External Devices - Remove or shut down USB devices when not in use. (Obviously, charging external devices with your laptop when using battery power will quickly drain your battery’s charge.)
4. No WiFi or Bluetooth - Much like external devices, WiFi and Bluetooth are resource hogs. Turn them off if you don’t need them and your laptop won’t have to work as hard.
5. Don’t Use CD/DVD Drives - Hard Drives consume a lot of power but CD/DVD drives consume even more. Try to save the information to your hard drive and use it from there.
6. Hibernate Not Standby - Standby mode reduces power usage but not nearly as much as hibernation. When your laptop goes into hibernation mode, it saves your system settings and switches off the power.
7. No Multitasking - Try to work on only one thing at time when relying on battery power. The more applications you run at more time, the more strain you put on your laptop.
8. Close Unnecessary Programs - The more programs you have running in the background, the harder your laptop has to work. Close all those non-essential programs (Printer Managers, Itunes, Desktop Search, etc.) you have running in the background. All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life.
9. Turn Off Scheduled Tasks - If you use scheduled tasks to run programs or scripts, or if you schedule other tasks to occur automatically at a certain time, adjust your settings so that these tasks won’t be performed when the computer is running on battery power.
10. No Gaming - If you have work to do, avoid playing games or watching DVDs. These activities use much more power that checking email or using a word processor.
11. Condition Your battery - Brand new batteries are not charged when you receive them and need to go through a conditioning process in order to reach their full capacity. This is particularly important for NiCD batteries. Conditioning usually involves fully charging and discharging your battery three to five times. Please check the documentation that comes with your laptop and follow the manufacturers recommendations.
12. Get Some Exercise - Not you… your battery. You should not leave a charged battery dormant for extended periods of time. Try to use your battery at least once a month or your battery could start to lose capacity. Again, follow the manufacturers guidelines.
13. Clean Your Contacts - Efficient power transfer can also help lengthen your battery’s life. Try to clean your battery’s metal contacts every few months with a soft cloth or cotton swab and rubbing alcohol.
14. Keep it Cool - Just like other electronics, your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s kept cool. Help it regulate heat by cleaning out the air vents with a soft cloth or cotton swab.
15. Avoid Extremes - Don’t leave your laptop battery exposed to extreme temperatures or direct sunlight.
16. Defrag Regularly - Defragmenting your hard drive reorganizes the way all of your files are stored so that they can be used more efficiently. And the more efficiently your hard drive does it’s job, the less strain it puts on your battery. Newer operating systems seem to handle drive fragmentation much better so this tip may not apply.
17. Add More Memory - You can minimize the reliance on virtual memory and reduce power consumption by adding memory to your laptop. The additional memory will also consume more power so the gain here might be minimal at best.
18. Add a Second Battery - If you truly want to maximize the productivity you get from laptop mobility, nothing helps more than keeping a charged spare battery on hand.

Laptops can be incredibly useful and convenient but they do have limits. Try a few of these tips and you’ll be less likely to run out of power when you really need it.