There are certain elementary rules for getting more from your laptop
battery. Make it a point to turn off Wi-Fi and BlueTooth. You are aware
that most laptops have shortcut keys to instantly disable wireless networking.
Completely avoid playing computer games, music or DVD movies as multimedia
activities tend to drain laptop batteries. Disconnect all external devices
like PC Card modems, firewire, USB devices and optical drives. It is advisable
to use the notebook touchpad instead of an external mouse. It will also
help to adjust your screen brightness as dimming your display saves battery
power. You'll certainly need to see your screen, but just how bright do
you need it to be? Screens lighted at full strength eat up 15 percent
more battery life than if your battery was at 50 percent brightness. So,
be sure to squeeze more life out of your laptop by reducing the brightness
of your monitor a great deal.
Select a laptop power scheme that turns off the notebook monitor and hard
disk after 10 minutes of inactivity. Remember to decrease or mute the
laptop speaker volume. Lastly, programs that are run from a CD or DVD
can be copied and run from the hard drive, which typically consumes less
power than an optical drive. Some games offer you the choice to install
to the hard drive, so choose this option, as you will get more life out
of your laptop than using the CD-ROM or DVD player, which are massive
battery consumers.
There are also some more tips to improve your laptop battery life. If
you do not use your laptop for extended periods of time like a few days
or a week, then remove the battery pack from the laptop. Never expose
the battery to high heat or extreme cold conditions. For instance, do
not leave your battery in your car during the summer months. Hot batteries
discharge very quickly, and cold ones can't create as much power. Make
it a point to plug your laptop charger adapter into a UPS and not directly
into a power outlet or surge protector. Fully charge new battery packs
before use. New pack needs to be fully charged and discharged (cycled)
a few times before it can qualify to full capacity. Leaving a battery
in a laptop while using an electrical outlet for long periods of time
will keep the battery in a constant state of charging up and that will
reduce the life cycle of the battery.
Energy management has been a problem since the earliest days of mobile
computing. Drains on a battery include virtually every component on your
laptop, including the screen, the hard drive, the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM,
and other peripherals. The biggest villain is DVD movie, which cause the
screen to run at full power for the life of the movie. Make sure you have
no devices plugged into the laptop that can drain its power, such as a
webcam, USB thumb-stick, or wireless PC card. According to laptop manufacturers,
connected peripherals can impact battery life by up to 12 percent (depending
on the peripheral), so get used to the touchpad instead of using an external
mouse when you're away from an electrical outlet. As a ‘Prevention
is better than cure’ philosophy, it is worth mentioning that air
travelers should make it a point to recharge the battery before a flight.
Find an electrical outlet while you're waiting for your flight at the
gate, a restaurant, or departure lounge.
The tips above should lengthen the time before you need to replace your
laptop’s battery. But on a daily basis, we’re far more concerned
with another type of battery life: how long we can keep our laptop running
without AC power. You may know most of the following tips already, but
it never hurts to refresh (or recharge) your memory.
- Dim your screen: Your laptop’s backlight requires a lot of
juice. Keep it as dim as you can comfortably read it.
- Shut off unneeded hardware: Turn off your Bluetooth, and if you’re
not using the internet, turn off your Wi-Fi receiver, as well. Don’t
use an external mouse or other device. And muting the PC’s sound
system not only saves power, it avoids annoying everyone else in the
café.
- Avoid multitasking: Run as few programs as you can get away with.
If possible, stick to the one application (word processor, browser,
or whatever) you’re currently using, plus your antivirus and firewall
in the background.And if you’re not on the internet, you don’t
need those two.
- Avoid multimedia: Save chores like photo editing and watching old
Daily Show videos for when you have AC power. And if you must listen
to music, use your iPod (or similar device).
- Know when to sleep and when to hibernate: You need to think about
when you want to save power by sending your laptop into Standby or Sleep
mode, and when you want to hibernate it.There’s a difference.
XP’s Standby and Vista and Windows 7’s Sleep modes keep
your PC on, using some power, but less of it than in normal use. Hibernate
saves the PC’s state to the hard drive, then shuts it off entirely,
so that no power is used.
On the other hand, Windows takes much longer–sometimes minutes–to
go into and come out of hibernation. And those are minutes that the
battery is draining heavily and you can’t work.
- Keep your battery Cool: Heat breaks down your laptop battery, and reduces its overall
life.
When you use your laptop, make sure the vents are unblocked. Never work
with the laptop on pillows or cushions. If possible, put it on a raised
stand that allows for plenty of airflow.
Also, clean the vents to your every so often with a can of compressed air. You
can buy this for a few dollars at any computer store. Be sure to follow
the directions on the can, and do this only when the notebook is off.
XP’s Standby mode isn’t really all that efficient. If your
laptop will be inactive for more than about half an hour, hibernate it.
Otherwise, use Standby.
But Vista and Windows 7 do a much better job with their Sleep mode. Don’t
bother hibernating your PC unless you think you’re going to go more
than two or three hours without using it.
|
Laptop Battery 
