Tips for Better Battery Life

Tips for Better Laptop Battery Life
While the Energizer bunny may keep going and going, laptop battery life has notoriously short staying power. Even though NASA figured out how to keep the Mars rovers powered and rolling across the Red Planet for years, few laptops can last for an entire cross country flight, wasting hours of potential productivity for the enterprising businessman. So instead of sitting in front of a blank screen, here are some tips to help get better laptop battery life.

First you should think like a marathon runner and not a sprinter. Use you resources sparingly and wisely. So instead of running your CPU at full processing throttle, ease back and ration out your power for the longer haul. Instead of running multiple programs at once, run one program at a time. You can also adjust the laptop's operating system's power management features so that the computer goes into sleep mode after a few minutes of inactivity.

The next tip for better laptop battery life is: let there be less light. Computer manufacturers have worked hard to make screens in new laptop models a marvel of high-def visual acuity and color vibrancy but all that eye candy comes at a cost—the backlight of LCD screens is a major power drain. It's comparable to the way front lawn Christmas lights double a home's December energy bill. So while traveling or working away from an electrical outlet, tone down the screen's brightness. In PCs that can be accomplished either by using the Function key and arrow pad…

• Function key (Fn)+ (to dim screen)

• Function key (Fn)+ (to increase brightness)

…or by going through the control panel:

• Start > Control Panel > Display> Power Options

When working on DC power, what you can't see can hurt your power supply. Turn off components that typically run in the background such as Wi-Fi, radios, Bluetooth, and messenger programs such as AIM. Similarly, be sure to cancel any automatically scheduled system tasks such as virus scans or defrags which engages the CPU for lengthy periods of time.

One of the biggest values of today's laptops is their multimedia capabilities. But playing computer games and watching DVDs are two of the quickest ways to drain your battery so leave the entertainment for when you are plugged in.

Keeping your cool is another effective tip for better laptop battery life. Heat is a battery's mortal enemy causing them to quickly degrade and shortening their overall lifespan. To keep your laptop batteries from overheating:

• Keep the vents clear

• Do not place a laptop on a pillow or cushioned surface while working

• Do not pack the laptop in a bag or case while the battery is still hot

Most appliances are designed to be plugged in constantly because they only run on direct current. But laptops are intended to be portable and their batteries are designed to be regularly discharged. Keeping your laptop plugged in constantly during the week will not make the battery last longer come the weekend. Over time, it will actually make it deplete more quickly. So don't charge your laptop constantly; let it discharge every week or two. If you only use your laptop away from a plug on rare occasion, you may want to remove the battery and store it at about 50 percent charged.

Also, while the old Nickel-based laptop batteries worked better when they were fully depleted before being recharged, the new Lithium-ion batteries will hold charge more effectively if they are never allowed to completely discharge. But eventually, performance will inevitably decline. On average, laptop batteries have a two to three year life span of effective recharging before they lose the ability to hold a multi-hour charge and need to be replaced.