Extending your Laptop Battery Life

Author Information

Ritchie Smythe has 111 Published Articles

United Kingdom,
UK,
Halesfield,
Information Technology Clear Limited,
Coppice House

Extending your Laptop Battery Life

Posted On : Dec-18-2009 | seen (948) times | Article Word Count : 589 |

Laptop users know the horrors of low battery situations. It’s no different from cellphone low bat warnings you get just when you need to call or worst, intruding right in the middle of a call. For laptops, the consequence of low bat is even more sinister and disastrous. It can come just as you are finishing an excel report and you have only a few seconds to save it. If the laptop dies on you while saving a long file, then that’s it. You just lost your file. In some models, you won’t even get any warning, especially when the battery is a year old. It just suddenly dies or goes into hibernation in the middle of your work.

What Can be Done with The Battery

Todate, Lithium-ion or Lithium polymer batteries are the focus of attention as they have the longest current storage among rechargeable batteries. But they still can’t provide at least a full-days life on computer laptops. Even sophisticated smartphones at their sizes fall short of a full-day’s power on a single charge. Until new battery types are made, we just have to contend with them and see how best to conserve and optimize use of battery power. Here are a few things to do towards this end.

- Lessen the monitor brightness. Laptop makers can claim they have the brightest and most brilliant monitors but in real world use, you have to turn that brightness down if you want to conserve battery power. Try to keep them at their useful minimum when working on word processing and spreadsheet application. Turn them fully down or just close the laptop when using it as your mp3 player. The only time you need them at their brightest is when watching a movie or editing an image. But perhaps a desktop PC is better for these two functions.

- Eject any disc you are not using. People often forget they have a disc inside its optical drive. Take it out right away when not in use. Any kind of mechanical action like your optical drives spinning unnecessarily drains your battery power. Game discs and CDs or DVDs eat the most as the drives spin continuously when they are in use. If you have the option to load the content of these discs on your PC, you can take out the discs and conserve battery power better. Hard disk spin consumes less power than optical drive spin.

- Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi. Just like cellphones, laptop Bluetooth when turned on drains battery power. Same with WiFi as both regularly checks for the presence of either and thus consume energy. Activate them only when you intend to use this wireless facility. And if you are low on battery, surfing the net on hotspots should be avoided. WiFi is a radio facility that consumes more power when sending signals over the airwaves.

- Remove external USB devices when not in use. Connected devices like wireless PCMCIA cards and USB flash drives and dongles consume power. Learn to use the touchpad because an external mouse on the USB port consumes power needlessly. Wireless A2DP earphones are great listening to mp3 music while doing your work. But like any Bluetooth function, A2DP earphones can drain your battery faster.
If you can get a spare battery on long trips, by all means do. You could also replace its battery with more powerful one that typically can last twice as long as standard batteries that came with it. GP

Re-Publish this Article

<h1>Extending your Laptop Battery Life</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_Ritchie Smythe.aspx'>Ritchie Smythe</a> Laptop users know the horrors of low battery situations. It’s no different from cellphone low bat warnings you get just when you need to call or worst, intruding right in the middle of a call. For laptops, the consequence of low bat is even more sinister and disastrous. It can come just as you are finishing an excel report and you have only a few seconds to save it. If the laptop dies on you while saving a long file, then that’s it. You just lost your file. In some models, you won’t even get any warning, especially when the battery is a year old. It just suddenly dies or goes into hibernation in the middle of your work.

What Can be Done with The Battery

Todate, Lithium-ion or Lithium polymer batteries are the focus of attention as they have the longest current storage among rechargeable batteries. But they still can’t provide at least a full-days life on computer laptops. Even sophisticated smartphones at their sizes fall short of a full-day’s power on a single charge. Until new battery types are made, we just have to contend with them and see how best to conserve and optimize use of battery power. Here are a few things to do towards this end.

- Lessen the monitor brightness. Laptop makers can claim they have the brightest and most brilliant monitors but in real world use, you have to turn that brightness down if you want to conserve battery power. Try to keep them at their useful minimum when working on word processing and spreadsheet application. Turn them fully down or just close the laptop when using it as your mp3 player. The only time you need them at their brightest is when watching a movie or editing an image. But perhaps a desktop PC is better for these two functions.

- Eject any disc you are not using. People often forget they have a disc inside its optical drive. Take it out right away when not in use. Any kind of mechanical action like your optical drives spinning unnecessarily drains your battery power. Game discs and CDs or DVDs eat the most as the drives spin continuously when they are in use. If you have the option to load the content of these discs on your PC, you can take out the discs and conserve battery power better. Hard disk spin consumes less power than optical drive spin.

- Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi. Just like cellphones, laptop Bluetooth when turned on drains battery power. Same with WiFi as both regularly checks for the presence of either and thus consume energy. Activate them only when you intend to use this wireless facility. And if you are low on battery, surfing the net on hotspots should be avoided. WiFi is a radio facility that consumes more power when sending signals over the airwaves.

- Remove external USB devices when not in use. Connected devices like wireless PCMCIA cards and USB flash drives and dongles consume power. Learn to use the touchpad because an external mouse on the USB port consumes power needlessly. Wireless A2DP earphones are great listening to mp3 music while doing your work. But like any Bluetooth function, A2DP earphones can drain your battery faster.
If you can get a spare battery on long trips, by all means do. You could also replace its battery with more powerful one that typically can last twice as long as standard batteries that came with it. GPAbout the Author: ITC Sales are a leading supplier of Dell and HP Laptops such as the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/Vostro_Laptops.html">Dell Precision</a> and Vostro. ITC also supply servers such as the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/Dell_Tower_Server_Solutions.html">Dell PowerEdge</a> Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Extending-your-Laptop-Battery-Life_7311.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Extending your Laptop Battery Life_7311.aspx</a>

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Extending your Laptop Battery Life_7311.aspx

Author Resource :
ITC Sales are a leading supplier of Dell and HP Laptops such as the Dell Precision and Vostro. ITC also supply servers such as the Dell PowerEdge

Keywords : Dell PowerEdge, Dell Precision, dell, poweredge, sc1430, 1900, 2900, SC440, 840 tower, server, solutions,

Category : Computers : Hardware

Print this Article Send to Friend