Tips for keeping your laptop in peak condition
Oops! battery. In our everyday life, draining out battery is one of the treacherous acts to better workmanship. Be it a Cell Phone, a Portable Media Player (PMP), a Laptop or any handheld device unless it is solar powered; all of these run in most of the case, if not always, via battery power. And there is nothing called a long battery life. The trick is to get the most out of the power that’s available. Most probably all of us have at least once suffered from battery drainage problem.
Here are few but effective ways to improve battery life or to elongate the operating hours of your laptop or notebook. Based on number of cells ie 6-cell, 8-cell or 12-cell, battery life can be determined but the work load on your device consume the power in no another way. Most of the tips and tricks might apply to traveling or on-the-go.
Maximized laptop battery life is achieved depending upon usage condition of the device, life time of the battery & practice of the following how to efficient laptop battery usage!
Reduce your Screen Brightness
Your laptop screen eats up power relentlessly. Dim the brightness of your screen using the function keys on your notebook to greatly reduce battery consumption. Some laptops screen brightness can be set to total zero, you might use such features when listening songs and working around offline.
Remove or Turn Off Unnecessary Devices
Unplug USB sticks or external drives from your notebook in order to extend your battery life, and only turn on energy-zapping devices such as WiFi receivers, network connections, web cams, and DVD drives when you actually need them. At other times, we recommend that you turn them off using the function keys, the Windows device manager, or special energy-saving programs.
Use “Max Battery” Mode
Reduce your computer’s power consumption by clicking on the little battery icon on the task bar and then selecting “Max Battery” mode. Although this does slighly reduce processor and graphics performance, your battery will last significantly longer.
Disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Strongly recommended that you turn off your notebook’s one of the most power consuming devices wireless radios, Graphics usages being the first on the power consumption rank.
Multimedia Junkies on the Web
You have a DVD or perhaps a bluray disc from which information is to be sought or watched, even movies perhaps. Assuming you can do this from the internet or your online server, do that rather than employing DVDs. DVDs consume a lot of power. Turning on Wi-Fi for short period is better to grasp your online docs than use the DVD. Alternating, you can copy all the necessary files to your hard disk then go on your work, guess this is the best and effective way.
Plug it on
Don’t think that plugging an AC supply will lower you battery life, instead whenever you have the power supply connect that to your notebook battery. This ensures of a dual mode: battery charging plus notebook running thru direct supply.
Away From Your Notebook
Are you going for a vacation or a distant relatives leaving your digital appliances including notebooks at home? Don’t forget to turn off your notebook and pull the battery out. If your notebook run on straight AC power without battery (in most of the cases, it is yes), do that and while on the road you can use the already charged battery.
Opt for apt Power Plan
Click the battery icon at the lower right of your laptop and see three default power plans namely; High Performance, Recommended and Power Saver. Most of the time for general use Power Saver is okay whereas all other time Recommend power plan is sufficient. Decide to select one, you will experience huge power savings.
Avoid Game Playing
Graphically intensive game uses all PC resources in general, which in turn has a large impact on the battery life.
Check if programs are running in background
Identify and remove programs that may be using your battery power and also impacting your overall performance. Unnecessary background programs and the stylish glass-look interface on Windows 8 & 7 suck the battery dry. Ensure you know which is NOT required program to start up and run in background. Be cautious, this could ruin your system. Use Tune Up Utilities StartUp Manager.
Power Save Mode in Windows & Mac Computers
Applies to all Windows 8, 7 and other PCs including MAC Computers. In stead of leaving your notebook on for hours doing nothing, leave it to sleep. Hybrid sleeps available in desktop computers. For every time general use, if you have to save power at the fullest, hibernate your laptop, no no… don’t sleep it or turn it off. Sleeping will obviously engage fans on; and turning off and turning on again will require more power than do that for hibernating. This is my too personal experience and I do it always unless restart is required after few more days.
Shorten the length of time before Windows turns off the display
When you’re not using the mobile PC—even for brief periods of time—you can save power by having Windows turn off the display after a brief period of inactivity. You can choose when Windows turns off the display, options available at Power Options.
Do Not Charge the battery for more than 8 hours
Recommended by most of the Notebook manufacturers including HP.
Purchase a Second battery to limit the number of re-charges on one battery
This is what I have been practicing for years by now. Purchasing second or travel battery (cost around 100$ for 8-cell battery) from your notebook manufacturer is the best practice.
Manufacture specific power saving schemes
As we see many hybrid devices (laptop cum tablets) emerging high into the consumer market, it is a great challenge for manufacturers to bring in long lasting battery power to the devices. Companies like HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and others install their custom power saving software applications into the laptops OEM versions – such manufacture supplied energy saving applications are much more effective than any others, so we highly encourage you to use them.
Finally, do laptop’s power saving feature really work? Yes. But if your laptop’s battery is too old to get recharge (after 18 months of typical usage), it’s your time to get a new battery. Hope these steps help you maximize laptop battery life and make you a distance runner. Share your tips & experience if you have any.
Partial source of this article via EkendraOnLine.com @ Top Ways to extend Notebook battery life on the go; how to Improve Laptop Battery Life
