Anglestacks: Tips For Extend Laptop Battery Life

We've all been there. You're in a meeting, or on the road, or in a classroom, and you find, to your horror, that your laptop is nearly dead. Maybe you forgot your power adapter, maybe there isn't an available outlet. For whatever reason, your battery power is dwindling, and you still have stuff to get done. Hope is not lost, however. There are some things you can do to buy more time on that almost-dead battery so you can meet a deadline or respond to an important email before it's too late.
Some of these techniques are for when you need to stretch your battery at that very moment, while others are preventative measures, best implemented before your battery life comes up short. There is some of overlap between the short- and long-term strategies we'll outline below, but even when the actions are the same, the reasons behind it may be different.
Short-Term Battery-Stretching Strategies
If you're in a tough spot right now, there are things you can do to extend the battery life immediately. None of these actions will actually increase the amount of power left in the battery, but instead will reduce the amount of power the laptop is using, letting you squeeze in a few more precious minutes before the battery goes kaput. The name of the game in these instances is power consumption, and you need to reduce yours to as little as possible.

1. Defrag regularly
This is one of the best ways yo improve your laptop’s battery life. Though inapplicable at times when the batter is working just fine, its an easy way to keep your laptop’s battery geared up at all times. Defragmentation of hard drive means faster and smoother working of the laptop, and low batter consumption.
2. Dim your screen 
Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

3. Reduce the number of background programs running:

Many a times, programs get to work as soon as the laptop is turned on. To minimize the number of programs, by closing the ones not in use via the task manager is a smart move to save on battery. Since these are the ones that consume a lot of it, hence reducing its life.

4. Cut down external devices –
USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery.  Remove or shut them down when not in use.  It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.
  
5.Keep Battery Contacts Clean :
Cleaner part, would mean a more efficient transfer of power and better battery life. The metal connections to the battery should be cleaned every once in a while. A cloth wetted with alcohol could be sufficient. And also the air vents should be kept on the cooler aide, hence require cleaning to. 

6.Clean off the Fan :
The laptop fan is quite often filled up with dirt and other tiny particles. To improvise on the battery working, and its longevity, it should be cleaned half yearly. This ensures proper working of the fan, and hence helps in keeping all the parts cool and provide with a better performance in the long run.

 7. Add more RAM -
This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory.  Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

8.Careful with games :
Its one of the activity that consumes maximum power. You should avoid using game CD’s and DVD’s. But if that’s all you want, then you should go for downloading them, over other external stuff.

9. Don’t multitask – Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery.  Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3′s, set your mind to one thing only.  If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!

10. Set up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).