You can make your laptop run longer on its battery by turning off or reduce all the things that expend power in your computer. If you are going on a long trip, or just taking your laptop to a local coffee shop, use these tips to help your laptop battery power last longer.
Reduce the number of open tasks
1.Learn to single-task. PC memory that is in-use takes more power to hold data. Also, using more memory might mean using more swap or virtual memory space on your laptop hard drive. All of this puts an additional drain on your laptop battery. Instead of leaving multiple applications and windows open, use only what you need at any given time. If your laptop has plenty of memory, then keep multiple applications open to avoid loading repeatedly from the hard drive. Close all the applications that run in the background on your computer like your PDA syncing software or USB hard drive backup software.
2.Run simple applications that don’t use much RAM, disk drive, or processing power. Use a basic text editor rather than the processor and RAM heavy Microsoft Word. Heavy applications like games or movie watching are especially hard on the battery.
Power Management
1.Use the power management settings on your computer that come built in. On Windows XP, click “Power Options” in your control panel. On a Mac, look for “Energy Saver” in System Preferences.
2.Switch off the wireless card if you do not plan to access your network or Internet connection. For Mac laptops, there is a button for powering on and off your wireless device is found on the toolbar at top.
3.Disable Bluetooth. If you don’t use this feature, you can safely disable it to avoid draining your laptop battery.
4.Shut down or hibernate the laptop rather than using standby, if you plan on not using it for a while. Standby continues to drain energy to keep your laptop ready to go when you open the cover.
5.Turn off unused ports. Disabling unused ports and components, such as VGA, Ethernet, PCMCIA, USB, and yes, your wireless, too. You can do this through the Device Manager or by configuring a separate hardware profile (see next step).
6.Create Power-Saving Hardware Profiles. Configure your laptop for the various scenarios in which you use it (on a plane, at the coffee shop, at the office, and so on). You can do this through the Hardware Profiles menu by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Preferences or by using a freeware utility such as SparkleXP.
7.Defrag your hard drive. The more fragmented your hard drive is the more your hard disk needs to work.[1] You do not need to do this on a Mac, as they do this automatically by themselves when needed. Also, do not do this if your computer uses a solid-state drive, as this will actually make it slower!
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