10 Ways to Increase the Life of Your Laptop Battery

Laptop batteries die all the time, and are very expensive. You want to get as much life as possible out of your laptop battery before you have to buy a new one. Laptop batteries can sometimes run over $100 and if you have an older laptop, it may exceed the actual cost of your laptop to replace the battery. Here are the ten best ways to keep your laptop battery running for the longest possible time, so you don't have to buy a new one.

1. Don't keep the battery charging all the time, take it out when its not in use. The heat from your computer will destroy your battery slowly over time. Lithium Ion batteries don't like heat, so don't expose them to excess heat.

2.Don't put your laptop on your lap or on your bed with the battery in it. Again, this is another heat issue, and the heat from putting your laptop on your lap or on your bed will also damage the components of your laptop not just ruin your battery.

3.Store your battery at a 40 percent charge, in a cool place. The fridge in a zip lock bag is the best place to store it.

4.Set your energy savings to the best battery life possible, turn off sound, dim the screen. Keep CDs out of the optical drive if your not using them. All of these things slowly drain the life out of your battery.

5.Keep the battery out of the sun, or your car. Again, heat is the number one killer here.

6.Don't charge your battery unless you absolutely have to. This means don't charge it just to charge it, don't run it down to nothing either. Just remember that your battery only has a certain amount of charges in it, usually around 500. Keep that in mind at all times.

7.Every so often, discharge the battery fully and charge it up fully without interruption. These are not nickel cadmium batteries which lose their memory, but do need conditioning every so often.

8.If your battery dies, throw it in the freezer for 24 hours and then charge it fully, and discharge it 3-4 times. This may bring your battery back to life. Only do this is the battery is completely dead.

9.Remember that watching video, and other resource hogs on your computer suck your battery of life, add as much ram as possible to decrease the strain on your CPU.

10.Don't ever try to shock your battery back to life, Lithium Ion batteries are dangerous and could explode and catch fire. Some batteries are dead for good when the die, recycle them properly.