Great Tips to Increase Your Laptop Battery Life
Have you ever been in one of those situations where you really need your laptop only to find that it has gone flat or has pretty much no charge left on it? Most people who own a laptop have been and there are some easy to do things that will lead to a much longer laptop battery life than you have had before. The simple steps shown below will help to keep your battery in tiptop condition and to get the best laptop battery life that you possibly can. So, here they are, some simple steps to greatly increase and extend laptop battery life for you:
• The most important thing to not charge your battery until it is nearly flat, and then charge it fully. Batteries are not designed to be half depleted, then recharged to 75%, then used a bit more. If you do this every time you use your laptop then you will find that the average laptop battery life that you get is greatly increased.
• Make sure that any unnecessary programs are closed. This will help reduce the amount of system resources your computer needs and therefore reduce the amount of power it drains from the batteries. This is very easy to do but most people will leave tons of useless programs running when they do not really need them.
• Wherever possible, plug your laptop into a power source. This helps to keep the battery fully charged so that when you do need to use it, the amount of life left will be greater than normal.
• A lot of people do not know it but your laptop battery is designed to run at a specific temperature range. If it is run above or below this temperature range then the life of the battery will be greatly decreased. If your laptop does become too hot, then turn it off and wait for it to cool down. Although these days batteries design has led to this temperature range being a lot more lenient and most computers will automatically shut down when they overheat. You will find this information in the manual provided with your laptop computer.
• Your computer loads many different programs during start up so disabling the ones that you do not need will help to reduce the amount of power required to start the system. Antivirus software is a killer so if you aren’t using the net or connecting your laptop to any external sources it is okay to disable this. Be aware though, something as simple as transferring a file from a USB bar can infect your computer with a virus so think twice before disabling any software.
• Adjust the brightness of your laptop screen. The brighter it is, the more power it uses. This can have a large effect on the amount of time you get out of your laptop battery so put it as low as possible without straining your eyes to see.
• If you need to perform any file transferring such as uploading songs to an MP3 player, try to do this while your computer is plugged into an AC adapter in the wall. These types of activities drain tremendous amounts of power from your computer.
• Try to plan out what you will need to use your laptop for. If you need to send some important emails during the day and do not have access to any power to charge your computer battery, don’t waste it all by watching DVD’s or surfing the web. DVD’s will drain your battery faster than nearly anything else.
• If you are not using your laptop, turn it off. Some laptops have a hibernate feature so it will automatically turn itself off when not being used. For the ones that don’t, it’s not a good idea to leave them only on standby as this will still use a lot of power even though it looks like it is turned off.
• If you know how to, de-fragment your hard drive. This will organise all your files and make it easier for your computer to access thus using less system resources and less power when accessing the files.
• If you are not using your computer for a long time, make sure that you charge the battery about once a month. This will keep the charge fresh and also keeps the electrons in the battery mobile. Another idea is to drain the battery to about 40% charge and keep it in a cool, dry place. This should only be done if you are not going to use it for a very long time.
• Be sure to always update your computer with the latest drivers, software etc. Some of these updates will help to extend your laptop battery life so it is a good idea to check for any updates at least once a week.
• If you are going to be watching movies try to upload them to your computer first. Your laptop will use a lot less power retrieving the files from your hard drive than from your DVD drive.
None of the above tips are hard to do, and they will all help to increase the life of your laptop battery. Whether it is the charge life, i.e. how long you can run your laptop off the battery before it needs recharging, or the shelf life, i.e. how long before you need to replace your battery (normally about 1000 full discharges and charges), the above tips will greatly help in extending both. This will help you to get a lot more out of your laptop battery. Also, mini laptops will usually use less power than larger laptops so consider one of these for personal use.
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