Optimizing laptop battery usage is very important to increase the battery life and performance.
Following are the Top tips to optimize the laptop battery :
- Buy smart: Look for notebooks with low power consuming processors like the Intel’s “CULV” “Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage” processors or AMD processors with “cool & Quiet” feature.
- Dim screen brightness: Choose an environment with adequate lighting—less brightness means you’ll drain less power from your battery.Use the Function key (Fn) available in most of the laptops to dim the brightness.
- Run your applications wisely: To get the most from your laptop, even when multitasking on the go, run resource intensive applications just when actively using them. Then make sure to close the applications you aren’t using.Running Video on the laptop will consume the battery very fast.Avoid to run video almost all time.
- Close unused applications: Programs will still use power while sitting idle.Also some unrequired background processes can be closed using the task manager.Stop such processes from starting at boot.
- Have the right RAM for your needs: With appropriate RAM, instructions run off memory instead of disk. Less power is needed to refresh the RAM than to spin the hard drive.So increasing the RAM in in the laptop with high resource usage works will highly improve the battery life.
- Clean your battery: Rub the battery’s metal contacts with rubbing alcohol every two months. Allow to dry before re-inserting.
- Remove extra accessories: Unplug items like PC cards, USB and FireWire devices that are not being used.
- Use built-in power management devices: Enable this feature and set your system to “Battery Optimized” mode or “Max Battery” mode. Put your computer to sleep earlier and turn off the screen backlight sooner.Start > Control Panel > Power Options (in Classic View).
- Disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if not being used: Wireless LAN and Bluetooth access uses power even when it is not in use. Transmitting and receiving data drains the battery.
- Defragment your hard drive regularly: The built-in defrag utility included with Windows will take your file fragments and put them closer together on your hard drive, which will decrease hard drive access times and save battery life.
- Use Direct Power as much as possible : Keep your laptop connected to the direct power supply using the laptop power adapter as much as possible.
- Connect laptop to UPS supply : If possible then connect your laptop to UPS supply.This will save your laptop from power fluctuations and if there are frequent power cuts then your laptop battery life-cycle will not be wasted.
- Use battery only when on move : Try to power laptop through battery only when you are on move or if there is no power supply.