A little additional care can help you increase your laptop battery capacity and also its life span. Today I list here ten healthy practices that may help you achieve optimum performance from your battery.
1. Wireless Radios
We all know how wireless activities drain our device’s battery. They consume significant power even when not in use but left ON. So when on battery power, it’s advisable to turn off wi-fi and bluetooth services.
2. Dimming the screen
We should reduce the screen brightness to the lowest comfortable level in order to gain some extra battery life.
3. Peripherals
USB devices and other external peripherals should be shut and removed if not in use. For instance, charging an iPod while on battery, unless very essential, is a bad idea. The same goes for removing any CD or DVD when not in use.
4. Extra RAM
Whenever our system runs out of RAM memory it uses virtual memory resulting in hard disk use, which is relatively a less efficient option in terms of power consumption. However, it goes without saying that additional ram does consume energy too so this advice suits best those users who often find themselves in need of extensive virtual memory.
5. Background Apps
It’s a good idea to shut down background programs to reduce CPU usage, say for instance desktop search applications.
6. Energy-saver options
Optimize your power options to get maximum battery juice. The notebook should try to shut down the hard disk and put the display to sleep whenever idle.
7. Battery Cycle
For a healthy lithium based battery, its advisable to keep the electrons in motion occasionally. It’s not absolutely healthy to keep it plugged in all the time. Ideally, one should let it discharge fully at least once a month to keep the battery juice flowing.
8. No multitasking
When on battery power, say in a flight, use one application at a time. Ideally shut the email app once you’re done with it and then turn on the word processor.
9. Defrag frequently
A defragmented disk puts lesser strain on the battery and hard disk, so make your disk drive as efficient as you can by performing defragmentation regularly, say once every month.
10. Hibernate
Hibernating is a healthier option compared to standby when running on battery. Hibernating retains your system state as you last left it. So it’s more energy efficient than even shutting down the computer and booting it all over again.
Can you think of any other tip which will save Laptop battery life and also help us to increase the laptop battery life?
Article by Rajat Kumar
Rajat has written 26 articles.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This tips are all very valid. My laptop is a must in my daily activities and I try to keep it running smooth which entails the battery life.
There are times when I just use my battery life and I also try to use one app at a time.
Did you say we should discharge the battery once a month!! Can you tell me why? Please try to be descriptive please.
your post is very important in this scenario because the use of laptops is increasing and battery is a thing that needs to be the fittest in your machine
@Provamsi
Yes draining the battery completely once in a month ensures its usage cycle to be even. Its like keep going gym so that you are always ready to do some heavy work
good example i must say! lol
I do hibernate my laptop. Also, I have acer epower management. Which controls the brightness, cpu speed, Lan, wireless etc.
I never kept my battery discharged. I will try some time.
hey ppl. It’s really nice to observe how so many of you can connect to this article. Indeed notebook battery is a significant issue for all of us. As for me i’m presently more than happy with seven hours backup from my new macbook pro.
@provamsi
that tip is for those who keep their laptops plugged in to the power supply all the time. so its like a full tank of water. stagnant water is unhealthy n prone to clogging. so once in a while a full cycle of drain and recharge is necessary for our battery be it any device.
Basically, most of the article is fine. All I can add is that you should consider getting a Solid State Drive – if you can afford it.
This article reminded me of one that I wrote quite a while ago, but this one is written better:
http://blog.gadodia.net/how-to-make-the-battery-last-longer-on-your-laptop/
hey vaibhav, so true, indeed most of us have similar opinions over this. as for ssd, more than the price, the fact is industry standards are not quite upto the mark yet, at least at the consumer level. but yeah my intel ssd boots up faster than anything else. so its only getting better day by day.
well yes i struggled with the fact that SSD’s don’t deliver on what the theory promises. But for my last one I decided to go for SSD for two reasons:
1. My processor was on the slower side, so i wanted to make up for the performance drop.
2. I was going to run Win 7, and that has better support for SSD as compared to Vista and XP.
the best is no moving parts. so its like d difference between ipod touch and ipod classic. lol. throw it anyway u wanna.
While on the topic, i found a link to this really informative post by Jeff Atwood: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001099.html
Vista Battery Saver is a very useful app that I™ve been using for the last couple of days to improve the battery life of my laptop running Windows Vista. I wouldn™t say that it has improved my battery life by the claimed 70%, but it has delivered significantly better battery performance. It also automatically switches back to a different power plan as soon as you plug your laptop back in, so that you can access all those fancy Vista features again.
its nice indeed to have simple and very necessary utilities like this integrated in the os itself. os’ are evolving too. great. & btw do register at gravatar.com Manoj.
Is it possible to find such a thing as a secondary battery for my Fujitsu Amilo Li 1720 model: MS2199?
did you try amazon?