Sooner or later, every laptop owner asks the same question: How long will my battery last? For most people, sadly, the answer is the same: not long enough. But there are plenty of things you can do to squeeze every last minute of power out of your laptop’s battery. Below are ” 10 Steps to Maximize the Power From Your Notebook’s Battery ”

1 . Lower Screen Brightness

Most notebooks come with the facility to lower the screen brightness . Some even have the ability CPU and cooling performance . Keep them to the lowest level and it can pump up some extra battery juice .

2 . Close Inactive Programs in the Background

All inactive applications which you are not using put some load on the CPU and decrease your battery life . Close any programs that are not important to you, when you are working on the battery .

3 . De-Fragmentation

Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly . The faster the hard-drive works, lesser the load it puts on your battery . How to Defrag ?

4 . More RAM

If you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory,. it is better to use more RAM. Virtual memory uses the hard disk a lot more, and will consume more energy .

5 . Cleanse Battery’s Metal Contacts

At least clean it with with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol, once every six months. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

6 . Limit Use of External Devices

Remove or shut them down when not in use. It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.

7 . Hibernate More, Standby Less

Keeping a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere near as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.

8 . Enhance Power Options

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).

9 . Lower your Graphics Use

Lower your graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks .

10 . Keep Operating Temperature Low

Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner .

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