Managing Your Laptop’s Battery Life

You’re on the go, but your laptop doesn’t seem to be keeping up. You purchased the bigger battery with extra life, yet your battery seems to last for a total of 30 minutes – not enough time to get anything done on the road. While you are struggling to find your power cord and save the project you are working on, you realize there has to be a better way to manage your battery life – and there is.

Are you managing your laptop battery power effectively?

Brightness
The display lamp, the one that provides your laptop with a brighter screen, is the largest consumer of your battery’s power. The brighter your display is, the more battery power being drawn out. In fact, you can only get 65 percent of your maximum battery life when you have brightness at the higher settings. Thus, by dimming your display, you can start to reserve a little battery power.

Applications
How many applications, devices and other system items are running while your laptop is on? If you do not need them, turn them off. Just by powering off applications and devices that draw power you can significantly improve your laptop’s battery life.

Powering Up and Down
Microsoft already has you covered when it comes to extending your battery life. When you are operating on battery power, you will notice that your laptop turns to “sleep” or “hibernation” mode after so many minutes of being unused. This helps preserve battery life. You can adjust these settings in your Control Panel to have your laptop hibernate after five minutes of inactivity or even ten minutes, rather than the typical 15 to 30 minute time frames.

Charging
Once your battery is fully charged, if you are hooked to a power cord, remove the battery. By doing so you will ensure your battery holds its charge and you do not wear down the integrity of the battery itself.

[Image via android-apps]