Laptop Battery Care

How annoying is it when your laptop's battery turns low during the peak time of your work? It can lead to many complications in your work and may even lead to loss of important data. If you think there is no solution to this, you are wrong. The most important step in laptop battery care is to extend its life expectancy. But it does not mean that you will charge your laptop fully one day and keep it unused for the next 15 days! So here are 10 ways in which you can save your laptop's battery and make it last longer for the sake of files saved on it.

How to Make Battery Life Last Longer

1. Dim Your Screen
Almost all the new laptops come with an option of dimming the screen. Some of these laptops also have an option by which you can control the CPU's cooling performance. Cut these to their lowest levels so as to make the most of your battery savings.

2. Cut the Extra Programs
When you are working on your laptop on its battery, make sure you cut down on all the extra programs that are running in the background for no important reason. Sending an email to your client while working on a spreadsheet and listening to a new album of Justin Timberlake, all on your laptop battery, will lead you nowhere as the battery drains out faster while multitasking, since it gives a lot of load to the CPU. Do one thing at a time and close all the other applications that are not important.

3. Cut Down on the External Devices
Using USB devices, DVD drives on laptop consumes a lot of battery when your laptop is unplugged. Shut these applications when you are not using them. Even the USB mouse that you might use at times, will lead to faster battery drainage. Hence, cutting down on the use of external devices like USB devices, DVDs, bluetooth or Wi-Fi will help reduce battery problems.

4. Hibernate or Standby?
Standby option does save laptop battery but not as much as hibernating does! Hibernating your laptop will save it in a condition the way it is and completely shut itself down, hence saving more battery.

5. Battery Cleaning
You must clean your laptop battery's metal contacts once every two months. Use a soft cloth and rub it with alcohol to moisten it. This will help in keeping the transfer of power from the battery more efficient.

6. Defrag Your Hard Drives
Defragging your hard drive will make it work more efficiently. An efficient hard drive always works faster and eases the load on the laptop's battery, reducing its consumption and leading to battery savings! But make sure you do not carry out defragmentation of your hard drive while working on laptop's battery!

7. Set Power options
Laptops come with various options for their power settings. Make sure you keep your laptop's power settings to "optimized use" or in "power saver" modes while working on your laptop. It will increase the battery backup for your laptop.

Extra Tips to Bear in Mind

Adding more RAM will help in battery savings. I would not get into the technical details of it. Another great tip could be switching off autosave options in MS Word and Excel while working on laptop's battery, will prove to be of great use when its comes to saving your laptop's battery. Try to reduce your graphics use by changing your screen's resolution and shutting down all the fancy graphic drivers like graphic cards. Mute the laptop's speaker volume. Turn off all the schedule tasks of your laptop. Clean out the air vents of your laptop using a soft cloth. You can also use a keyboard cleaner for this purpose. Our laptop will operate more efficiently when it's temperature is low, hence it helps in saving battery.

These laptop battery care and maintenance tips are tried and tested and are sure to save a great deal of your laptop's battery. It will also increase your laptop's battery life, if you regularly follow them. If your laptop battery is giving you one hour of back up instead of its usual two hours of back up, it is the time to change your laptop's battery.