I have a old laptop that truth be told can’t hold much power compared to new ones (3600mAH) so I need to get enough out of it to do my basic things so I’m going to tell you what I do for this.
1. Most important one turn the brightness to a minimal, now my Fn button doesn’t work so I have to do this a complete different way so I use PowerStrip which allows me to turn everything down and it saves a lot of power.
2. Use very little programs, if I’m on the battery i try to use just one program at a time for example I have a seperate install of firefox which has no addons or anything like this, means it uses much less resources saving my laptop power.
3. Do not use the CD/DVD drive, these consume a lot of power to avoid these you can use virtual drives such as deamon tools this will allow you to run a image file for your virtual drive. If you have a newer laptop as well you might find a button to disable the drive so using it will also help.
4. Turn off wireless card when it is possible, so if your writing on your blog instead boot up something like notepad and edit it later in your blog this will save even more power, personally I cant turn my connection off I’m using the internet all the time I’m on it.
5. Adjust for best performance, this is basically turning your desktop to classic style, but for even better performance you need to go to control panel >> system >> advanced >> adjust for best performance.
I hope this all helps I will be coming up with some more later on, if you like your battery these are the best ways to keep it powered for longer, using these will also help your laptop stay cool which is critical for summer.
For a laptop cooler click the image on the left, this will cool your laptop down helping your computer live longer and keeping your lap cool at the same time.
Those are all great tips! Another thing would be to turn it off when your not using it.
Keep the good stuff coming, Mike.
Thats a good tip would be better using something like hibernate as it doesn’t consume as much power as booting up.
Thanks for the comment though Heather
.
also you can turn of you laptop. this way it will not consume battery at all.
My first laptop is on the way..this info is very helpful and will keep in mind while using it.
Great tips.
Also if you want the battery to last longer over a period of time, its always good to make sure you drain it fully and charge it fully as often as you can in order to train the battery.
very useful tips indeed. Thanks for the extra tip also Darksat.
put your laptop in cold condition,it will save the fan power if you laptop is not high tempreture
Turning it off vs. hibernating it all depends on how long it’ll be until you use it again. If you’re done for the day it’s better to turn it off, if you’re going to be using it again in a few hours set it to hibernate.
Depending on the computer but generally if its going to be hibernating for more than 6 hours its better to turn it off (again totally depends on the computer).
If you’re running off mains power for any length of time, remove the battery. Constant charging cycles when on mains power will reduce the battery life.
@Ricky – That is another good method just switch it off.
@Linda – Very glad to know my post helped.
@Darksat – Very important to drain the battery fully then charge it back up, I also heard with Li-On batteries it isn’t good to do this every time, you should at least do it after every ten charges though.
@x5i – Glad to know I helped
@ICalvyn – It really depends on the age of the laptop, that method works with newer laptops but with old laptops their more or less running at the same speed constantly, but the fan itself doesn’t use up much power.
@Adam – I would have to disagree I have my laptop on hibernate as a alternative to switching it off and that has been off for 48 hours on hibernate and hasn’t done used any battery power.
@Alan – That really is a must if you do not want to kill the battery, I have known many people to get through a lot of batteries because of this
Great tips.
Also if you want the battery to last longer over a period of time, its always good to make sure you drain it fully and charge it fully as often as you can in order to train the battery.
Thats a good tip would be better using something like hibernate as it doesn’t consume as much power as booting up.
Thanks for the comment though Heather
.
[...] read more | digg story [...]
spammer, link edited.
thanks a lot for the tips this will help me a lot and please accept as a new friend of this forum