Five Ways to Boost Your Battery Life
May 28th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 7 Comments
If you’ve ever been in the frustrating position of needing to get something done while on the move, and having your notebook battery die, you know the mobile vicissitudes. As more and more people use hotspots, and compute on the go, I’m surprised that they often don’t follow simple, logical steps for extending battery life. Here are some good rules to follow.
Carry an Extra Battery. This is something I’ve been doing for years, and is the key to getting all day power. You can get an extra battery for your notebook for around $100 typically. If you spend around $200 to $300, you can get very long lasting power sources, such as Electrovaya’s.
Remove PC Cards When Not in Use. Many PC Cards draw a little power continuously even when you’re not using them. Remove them when not in use.
Conserving Power in Windows Vista. Vista has received much negative press for draining battery power quickly on notebook computers. You can get your battery to last a lot longer than it otherwise will by turning down the brightness, which especially makes sense if you are, say, just doing word processing and e-mail. Go to Control Panel/Power options/Advanced Settings/Display and cycle down brightness to 50 percent or lower.
Hibernate. Set the timer for your computer’s hibernate mode so that only a couple of minutes after you stop using it, it’s hibernating.
Use AC Power Outlets in Airports and Hotspots. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find these if you look around. AC outlets are often found around food service areas in airports and hotspots, and elsewhere.
Do you have any tips on getting better battery life?
7 Comments Post your own comment
Anol says: May 28th, 2008 6:08pm
All laptop batteries start off greatly, and over time the performance decreases rapidly. The main reason is - every chemical, rechargeable batteries got specific number of ‘recharge sessions’. If you keep charging the Laptop, when battery is full, the battery life will definitely degenerate over time.
Best way to avoid this :
1. Completely drain your battery before recharging
2. Remove your battery whenever possible and work with direct power supply.
BK says: May 28th, 2008 7:39pm
In what country are there abundant AC outlets in airports?
There’s nothing like the sight of three or four (apparently) highly paid executives sitting on the floor at the airport, huddled around two lone outlets next to the bathroom, frantically swapping power between them every 5 minutes or so. Or the lone soul begging for just 10 minutes of charge time from someone juicing both their iPod and cell at once.
If you travel a lot, an airline club membership provides a much more reliable and less contentious source of power, along with a more quiet atmosphere for working.
David Owens says: May 29th, 2008 2:24am
Turn off the bluetooth on your device. This goes for mobiles/cell phones too.
Bluetooth devours huge amounts battery power, hence it being absent from the iPhone (so far).
the dude says: May 29th, 2008 3:03am
Kill wireless if you are not using it.
Kill your antivirus realtime protection. Makes the HDD work more. Kill unnecessary services or CPU consuming apps that you are not using.
Switch to power saver mode.
Zia says: May 29th, 2008 3:54am
I agree with Anol (as my post discussed it). Worth also checking 15 ways to extend your laptop’s battery life.
Darren says: May 29th, 2008 10:23am
Biggest drains on your battery:
Optical drives (CD/DVD, etc.)
Wireless (bluetooth, wifi)
External devices
Display
HDD
Eject any disks from your optical drive, turn off what wireless service you can live without.
Set your wifi adapter to use power-saving mode.
Dim your display, let it shut off when it’s idle.
Let your HDD spin/power down when it’s not needed.
Avoid external peripherals wherever possible.
@Anol: a recharge ‘cycle’ in a modern Li-ion battery is one full drain and recharge. Charging the battery twice from 50% counts as one “cycle”. The chargers stop when the battery is full, and begin to power the device on AC only.
You should not make a habit of fully draining a Li-ion or NiMH battery — that advice no longer applies, and can actually cause degredation when using recent (<= 3 yrs old) designs.
However, you should use the battery from time to time; if you find yourself having very long sessions without the need for battery power, removing the battery is a good way to keep it from being exposed to the heat of the notebook, and this can prolong its useful life.
Michael says: May 29th, 2008 5:47pm
Lower the brightness of your display, that is the number one thing I would tell someone to do, keep it as dim as possible.