Though great gadgets, laptops quickly lose their charm when you've to continuously search for a power point to top up its battery. How can you extend your battery for a still longer time? We may suggest you 10 simple ways to do so.
a) Defragment your hard drive:
You should regularly defragment your hard drive, because a fast hard drive will exert less demand on your laptop hard drive. However you should make it a point to defrag it on regular power and not while it is on laptop battery. Fragmentation is better handled on Mac operating systems so this may not be too applicable on Apple systems.
b) Make it a point to dim your laptop screen:
Most of the laptops have an inbuilt ability to dim the laptop screen. Many of the latest ones have software's and hardware combos to modify CPU/ cooling. You can chop them down to the lowest possible level which you can manage to save on battery power.
c) Remove the external devices on laptop:
The USB and WiFi have a drain on your laptop batteries so you should remove them or shut them when they are not in use. You should also avoid charging devices like iPod via laptop when it is operating on battery to avoid battery discharge.
D) Try adding RAM:
This will enable you to do more of processing with your laptop memory which is fast than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory
Usage results in hard drive use on which it is created and is less power efficient way.
E) Always keep the battery contacts clean:
Make it a point to clean battery's contacts which are of metal every couple of months with a cloth moist with some alcohol. This will make transfer of power from notebook battery quite efficient.
F) Maintain your laptop battery:
You should not leave the charged battery dormant without usage for a long time. Make it a point to use the battery at least once in a week. Also take care so as not to discharge the Li-On battery completely.
G) Keep laptop on hibernation:
Though standby mode saves you some power but it is not that much which hibernate function saves. Hibernating a laptop will in reality save your laptop state as it is and it shuts down completely.
H) Tune up your power options:
You should go to the "power options" in your control panel and set the options so that power use is set to "max battery" for maximum power savings.
I) Avoid Multitasking:
Make it a point to do only one thing when on battery. Instead of say, working on PowerPoint, enabling your mail client to run silently in background and listening to MP3s will only drain your laptop batteries fast. Try to concentrate on just one thing.
J) Prevent the Memory Effect -
If the laptop you are using is too old, you may want to prevent the memory effect- that is you keep the laptop battery healthy by first fully charging it and then discharging the same once every month.
Li-Ion batteries which are now a days most laptops have do not suffer from such an effect.
