Tips and Tricks to Extend Your Laptop Battery Life

If you are travelling and plan to use your laptop you will likely be using it while on its battery power. There are several ways to extend the life of your battery.

You will want to prepare your laptop settings in advance for optimal use of the battery. There may not always be a power source available to recharge your battery. If you will be away from a power source for extended periods, you may want to have a fully charged backup battery with you. If you use your laptop constantly this will be a wise investment. There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a project with a deadline and the battery going dead and no way to recharge it.

Before you leave, using your function key (Fn), and the corresponding key to lower the resolution and the brightness on your screen as low as you can will save power. You will also want to disable any screen savers. These consume power and it is not necessary to have a screen saver while on battery power. You may want to carry an external light source like a book light that clips onto your screen to give you additional light.

You may have your applications like Excel or Power Point set to auto-save every few minutes to save your work in progress. Disable these functions while using the battery, but do not forget to save your work occasionally yourself. Do not have a CD or DVD in the computer unless you must use it. Even if you are not viewing or listening to it, it will still spin occasionally and use your battery power.

Do not multi-task while on battery power. Stick to the project and do not have several applications running in the background. Do not have multiple screens up at the same time as this causes additional CPU usage, which heats up the computer causing the fan to run more, and for longer periods to cool down the motherboard and CPU.

Some of the older batteries, not the Li-on ones, need to be fully charged then fully run out before recharging them to give them longer life. Do not play games while on battery power. Games take a large amount of video and graphic usage and sound card usage. You also want to disable your sound card if possible. Just turning down the volume does not save power.

Set your computer to hibernate when there is no usage for five or ten minutes. Letting it go to standby uses power while it waits for you to open the top again. Putting it in hibernate mode when the lid is closed will turn the computer off completely. Try not to use any external devices like USB or add-on cards. These devices consume a lot of power and while using the battery you can do without them. If you are not using the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or the IR devices, turn them off with the hard off button or switch. Do not just disable them because they will still draw power. If you do not have a hard power switch use the management program to turn power them off.

These are just a few of the ways you can extend the life of your laptop battery. Check with your owner's manual or the manufacturer's website for more tips on your particular model.