How to Keep Your Laptop Battery Going for As Long As Possible

Everybody faces this problem when we are using laptops. Normally, a new battery pack comes in a very low charge condition, and must be fully charged before use. Refer to the user manual of your portable electronic equipment, for charging instructions. New battery pack needs to be fully charged and fully discharged or cycled as much as five times to condition them into performing at full capacity. 

Steps

 

1. Unplug battery after each use. 
2. Use the hard drive more than the CD/DVD drive. As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives use more power than hard drive. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they are not actively being used. Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives.
3. Clean battery contacts more often. Clean your battery's metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
4. SHUT OFF the WiFi, if you don't need it. Usually, there is a switch, but sometimes you have to do it in the WIFI config.
5. Battery care. Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks.
6. Hibernate is better than standby on a laptop. Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn't save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does.Hibernating a laptop will actually save more power as it will completely shut down itself .
7. Defragging your hard drive regularly. The faster your hard drive does its work the less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly. In Windows XP, you do this by going to "My Computer" and right click on the "C:\" drive. Then, select "Properties" In Properties, click Tools. In tools click Defrag Now.
8. Dim the laptop 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 life.
9. No background programs. I-tunes, Desktop Search or screensavers, etc. All these add load to the CPU and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isn't crucial when you're on battery.
10. Cut down on external devices. USB devices & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use.
11. Charging devices. If you charge other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop you will quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.
12. Add more RAM memory. 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.
13. Laptop temperature down. Your laptop operates more efficiently when it's cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or laptop cooling fan.
14. Optimize your power options in Windows. 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).
15. Multitasking is a bad idea. 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.
16. Reducing laptop demands. Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD.
17. Buy an Energy Star or other efficient laptop. Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries. Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix.
18. Memory Effect. If you're using a very old laptop, you'll want to prevent the memory effect will keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.
19. Autosave function is not good. Microsoft Word and Excel's autosave functions are great, but because they keep saving at regular intervals, they work your hard drive harder than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.
20. Less graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Video cards use as more power today as hard disks.