Thread: Extend Laptop Battery Life

Laptops are more powerful than ever. However, this power comes with a downside, short laptop battery life. The average life of a rechargeable battery is 78 minutes. This short time is based on low to mid range processing activity. If you are a gamer or movie lover, your laptop battery life will be significantly shorter unplugged. Even wireless internet modems will drain your battery by 20% per hour. Never the less, there are simple tweaks that will extend your battery life and provide your PC with better power usage. Remember that the more streamline and efficient your operating system the better your laptop battery life.

Step 1:Configure Power Plans

Vista has three pre-set power plans. This a simple step that allows you to control your power options in Windows. Depending on which plan you choose may help you maximize your battery power.

1. In Control Panel; click Power Options
2. Choose a Power Plan.
3. Adjust: Display, Sleep and Brightness

OR

1. In the Task Bar, right click the battery icon.
2. Click Power Options
3. Choose a Power Plan.
4. Adjust: Display, Sleep and Brightness


Three defined power plans can be further edited to maximize your laptop battery life by clicking Change plan settings located under your plan title. You can manage how your laptop power usage while on battery and plugged in. Try to strike a balance between your usage and the power plans.


Step 2:Control Hardware Power Usage

Your laptop hardware will drastically drain your laptop battery life if not configured correctly. Screens, wireless adapters and USB devices can wreak havoc on your power reserves. However toggling the advance settings of your power plan will allow you to significantly extend your battery life. Here is how:


Tweak Hard Drive Shutdown Times

1. In the Edit Plans Settings window menu(previous steps 1-3), Choose change advanced settings.
2. Click the Hard Disk to expand the settings tree. Choose when the hard drive will shut off
http://www.delete-computer-history.c...tterylife3.png

Alter Wireless Adapter Performance

1. In the Edit Plans Settings window menu(previous steps 1-3), Choose change advanced settings.
2. Click Wireless to expand the settings tree. Choose the power plan that suits you


Step 3:Cut Down on Background Programs

When you start your computer many unnecessary processes are loaded. All these program require your hard drive to be active thus killing your laptop battery life You can eliminate this by managing your msconfig.



Here is how:1. Open your Start menu.
2. Click Run
3. In the command screen type "msconfig.exe"
4. In the system configuration utility,click either service or startup tab.
5. Uncheck all programs that your are no longer want to run in the background.
6. Click OK
For a list of programs that you don't need and tips on speed up your startup, click this link

Cleaning your Registry- A corrupted registry can have thousand of registry keys that your hard drive will have to keep active. You should perform a Scan Of Your Registry. If you receive more than 30 errors, this is the reason why you have slowdown.

Step 4:Use Hybrid Sleep

Hybrid sleep acts as a combination of hibernation and sleep. This feature was originally designed for desktops. However, this option can also be very beneficial in laptops. It works by making a snap shot copy of all the programs that are open on your PC. This image is sent to the hard drive. This is a better option than sleep because it drains less of your battery than Sleep option. This works by putting a hold on activity of the programs that are opened. Here is how:


1. In the Edit Plans Settings window menu(previous steps 1-3), Choose change advanced settings.
2. Click Sleep to expand the settings tree. Choose the Hybrid Sleep
3. Enable Hybrid Sleep options.


Source

Although this is not my own tutorial, it takes a lot of patiance to put all the tags and such so please don't attack me. Thank you.

Thanks for the nice tut mate. I'm using w7 on a laptop and didn't know that wireless connection will drain this many amount of battery life when unplugged lol.

Another small hint: its better to keep topping up your battery (if possible of course) then deplete it fully and then recharge.

Contrary to popular belief, this actually DECREASES the overall amount of useable cycles left in your battery. The so called ‘battery memory’ fad was only a concern for nickel cadmium, most laptops these days use lithium ion.

Because of this tutorial my laptop instead of dying after two hours of being unplugged can be used for four straight hours without even hitting red. And I mean using it at full functionality (movies, torrenting, gaming). Amazing tutorial!

All those things that you mention above are indeed useful to increase your battery life.. but just on a note.. it does not really increase battery life to that much of a significant amount.. it only helps to increase back up time on your battery as it is not spending that much amount to support all those extra settings and programs..

A real way to increase your battery life is as said by ecolem Extend Laptop Battery Life here to let it deplete to less than 10% and than put to recharge..

But what really do kill one's laptop battery life is over charging.. A lot of us don't know that if you keep your battery plugged in even after its 100% charged for long time of hours its kills the battery life spam to up to 25%.. Usually a lithium battery have a life span of upto 3-4 years without any trouble but a regularly over charged battery life span is around 2 years.. of course it varies with company, voltage fluctuations and usage and many other factors, but it is something that can be avoided..

So next time you see 100% on your battery charge, remove it from the socket ( or remove power supply, but it is not that handy). If you are working at a steady position without moving, remove the battery if it is completely charged and make it live longer.. (Source can be found in many tech books send with batteries, I found it in my Dell laptop booklet.. :P )

errrr if u're leeching/seeding 24x7 on your favourite trackers isn't it better to pull out the battery and use direct a/c instead??

this way the battery lifespan can be longer...

does anyone here heard about worn out rechargeable batteries being used again possibly by putting it inside a freezer to re power it? Said that it can be used again for months. I'll try this with my laptop batt and post again the result.

thanks for this. it never occured to me that wireless drains the bat, and im ussually unplugged from the power and plugged into the internet, so i'll make sure to turn the wireless off.

Originally Posted by ac8409

All those things that you mention above are indeed useful to increase your battery life.. but just on a note.. it does not really increase battery life to that much of a significant amount.. it only helps to increase back up time on your battery as it is not spending that much amount to support all those extra settings and programs..

A real way to increase your battery life is as said by ecolem Extend Laptop Battery Life here to let it deplete to less than 10% and than put to recharge..

But what really do kill one's laptop battery life is over charging.. A lot of us don't know that if you keep your battery plugged in even after its 100% charged for long time of hours its kills the battery life spam to up to 25%.. Usually a lithium battery have a life span of upto 3-4 years without any trouble but a regularly over charged battery life span is around 2 years.. of course it varies with company, voltage fluctuations and usage and many other factors, but it is something that can be avoided..

So next time you see 100% on your battery charge, remove it from the socket ( or remove power supply, but it is not that handy). If you are working at a steady position without moving, remove the battery if it is completely charged and make it live longer.. (Source can be found in many tech books send with batteries, I found it in my Dell laptop booklet.. :P )

i got scared by looking at your post!!i mean ,i didnt know that overcharging the battery would reduce its life....but now i leave for downloading the whole night in my laptop,so i cant keep getting up every 2 hrs to remove the connections...so whats the best option in this case??