Power to the laptop…

You have your laptop and you have thought that you might make use of the fact that it was designed to be portable so you unplug it from the wall and sit on your bed or couch – unfortunately your battery is wasting away like sand through your fingers…

You bought a laptop to be portable so make sure you can be portable for longer by following these simple steps…

Is it a need or a want?

By running a load of applications that aren’t being used is an absolute waste of battery power.  Close the applications that aren’t being used and save your battery a bit of grief – stick to the basic applications that you need and avoid applications that use up more system resources.

Screen brightness – turn it down!

Unless you have an issue with your eyes you should think about turning down the brightness of your laptop screen…does it really need to be so bright?  You should notice that your battery will last a lot longer as it doesn’t have to waste its time squeezing out as much brightness as possible!

Start-up?  Get out!

Do you know how many pointless start-up applications you have running on your laptop?  They are all taking their toll on your laptop’s battery so go through them and get rid of the ones that you don’t need!

You’ll probably find that you’re cruising through the list and you don’t even know what half of the applications are – imagine how much healthier it will be for your laptop’s battery when they’re gone.

Unplug the unnecessary…

External devices that are plugged into your laptop are stealing the life out of your battery – remove them if you are not using them.  Unless you’re sitting comfortably attached to the wall you would be better off leaving the external hard drive or the iPod away from the laptop otherwise you’ll find yourself without juice after a little while.

How hot are you?

There is a certain temperature that your laptop should be working at and if it isn’t running at that temperature then you are going to be using up a lot more power – if you have the option to shut the laptop down to use at a later time then do so and you’ll benefit by being given the gift of time!

Sleep?  No thanks…I’ll hibernate!

Power saving modes are great, or are they?  Sleep mode is a bit of a con, actually – the laptop is still using power and you aren’t using it so that power is just being wasted.

Instead you need to set the laptop to go into hibernation which turns the system off saving your battery for when you actually do need it!  And don’t worry you won’t be losing anything because your clever little laptop will remember everything!!  Hopefully…

What about you?

Do you have any tried and tested ways of helping your laptop’s battery?  Did your find our tips effective?  Leave a comment and let us know what you think!