Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

1.) Dim your screen - most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen. Turn the brightness to a minimal.

2.) Cut down on programs running in the background. Programs such as desktop search add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery. Use very little programs.

3.) Cut down external devices - USB devices (including your mouse) and Wireless cards 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.

4.) Users should not charge their mobile devices (HTC, Samsung, etc.) using USB cable. This is another good reason behind battery getting drained out. Always charge the devices using power adaptor.

5.) Lower the graphics use- You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks.

6.) Don’t multitask - Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery.

7) Regular defragmentation helps to arrange data more efficiently thus making the hard drive work less to access the data. The quicker the moving hard drive works lesser is the load placed on the battery. Thus, your batter can last longer and efficiency increases with hard drive maintenance.

8) It may be a defrag or a virus scan, but make sure it is scheduled for a time when you are near a power outlet. If not then nix them for the moment.

9) Even if you don’t intend to use it, don’t leave any CD/DVDs as leftovers in the drives. A spinning drive sucks battery power like a sponge.

10) In the Stand By mode or sleep mode, the computer turns of the hard drive and the display, but memory remains active while the CPU slows down. This draws on the battery. In contrast, hibernation mode is better because the computer saves the current state and shuts itself down completely thus saving power.