Monday, May 18, 2009

Extend the Run Time of Your Laptop's Battery Life

By Stephen Almanson

I love my laptop computer. I take it with me everywhere. Sure I can do most of the things I do on my laptop on my cel phone, but my cel phone screen does not give me the visual impact that my laptop does. I want to see the full screen. The only real problem I have is that my laptop battery runs out fairy quickly, and I am not the only one who complains about this problem.

Statistics say that the current average battery life for a rechargeable laptop battery life is 78 minutes. So after an hour, you need to start hunting for an outlet or you need to shut things down. This can be inconvenient to say the least. An hour is not very much time at all.

But there are a few things you can do to extend those 78 minutes. If you are watching a DVD or streaming video, or if you are playing games, you will drain your battery much more rapidly than if you are running a simple program such as email or a word processor. The way you use your laptop can provide you with more or less battery time.

First, it is a good idea to keep your monitor as dim as you can. Brightness is one of the easiest things to adjust on your laptop. If your are outside during the day, you will need to have the brightness up pretty high to compete with the sun. However, if you are working indoors, you can usually adjust downward. You can also lower the resolution of your screen and limit your use of graphics.

External devices drain battery, this includes your USB mouse too. Try to limit their use to when you are running off the battery, and never charge other devices from your laptop unless it is plugged into an outlet itself. These devices rapidly drain your battery.

Remember, when working on battery power, multi-tasking is bad. You should reduce the number of programs that are active in the background as well as limiting what you are using. When you are operating on battery power it is always a good idea to shut down anything you do not need.

As previously mentioned, simple programs such as email and word processing or spreadsheet programs are better to use when you are trying to conserve battery than gaming. If you are using a program that has auto-save enabled, you should turn this off. Just remember to save your work occasionally, especially as you get closer to running out of battery.

Using hibernate instead of standby will gain you a bit of battery time too. If you have a newer computer you can manage your power options in your control panel; select max battery option.

Finally, newer laptops are more energy efficient than older ones. So it may be time to bite the bullet and buy yourself a new laptop. There are even some out there that promise batteries which last all day. Do your research to find out what will best suit your needs. - 22787

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