Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re
constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep
your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.
1. Defrag regularly - The faster your hard drive does its w
ork – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and
your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible bydefragging it
regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built
to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.
2. Dim your screen – Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop
screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance. Cut
them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra
battery juice.
3. Cut down on programs running in the background. Itunes, Desktop Search, etc.
All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything
that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.
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| Your Laptop Is Your Love |
4. Cut down external devices – USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi
drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use. It
goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your
laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on
your laptop battery.
5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your
laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in
hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM
will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run
memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.
6. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives
are, CD and DVD drives are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power
consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used.
Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol
120% rather than optical ones.
7. Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal contacts every
couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the
transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
8. Take care of your battery – Exercise the Battery.
Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged,
you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks.
Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for
older batteries with memory effects)
9. Hibernate not standby – Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some
power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere
as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating a PC will actually
save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.
10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently
when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner
11. Set up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your
windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select
the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).
12. Don’t multitask – Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery. Rather
than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background
and listening to your latest set of MP3′s, set your mind to one thing only. If
you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!
13. Go easy on the PC demands – The more you demand from your PC. Passive
activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming
or playing a DVD. If you’ve got a single battery charge – pick your priorities
wisely.
14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop - Laptops are getting more and more
efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all
day long batteries. Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an
aging one is usually a quick fix.
15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want
to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and
then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to
the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer
from the memory effect.
Thanks.
