Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when youre constantly looking for the nearest power outlet

to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so. 1. Defrag regularly - The faster your hard drive does its work less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible bydefragging it regularly. (but not while its on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems. 2. Dim your screen Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance. Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice. 3. Cut down on programs running in the background. Itunes, Desktop Search, etc. All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isnt crucial when youre on battery. 4. Cut down external devices USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. 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. 5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory. 6. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used. Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones. 7. Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your batterys metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient. 8. Take care of your battery Exercise the Battery. Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects) 9. Hibernate not standby Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesnt save anywhere as much power as the hibernate

function does. Hibernating a PC will actually save your PCs state as it is, and completely shut itself down 10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently when its cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com. 11. Set up and optimize your 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). 12. Dont multitask Do one thing at a time when youre on battery. Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3s, set your mind to one thing only. If you dont youll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed! 13. Go easy on the PC demands The more you demand from your PC. Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD. If youve got a single battery charge pick your priorities wisely. 14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop - Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries. Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix. 15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If youre using a very old laptop, youll want to prevent the memory effect Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect. Bonus Tip #1: Turn off the autosave function. MS-Words and Excels autosave functions are great but because they keep saving regular intervals, they work your hard driver harder than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies. Bonus Tip #2: Lower the 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 Thanks Andrew Update 7/7/07: Bonus Tip #1 to give caution about turning off autosave, tip #8 to change information about discharging batteries thanks to all who pointed it out. Added Bonus tip #2, Tip #1 to add in clause in regards to Mac OSX, Tip #1 about the spinning of hard drives thanks to all who pointed it out

Few days back I had written an article on how you can clean your laptop screen. here is another article on laptop maintenance. I will try to write more such articles in the coming days too. So normally laptop batteries have lifetime of 2-3 years and after that they start showing signs of aging and you may have to change them. A 9 cell battery which gives backup of 4-5 hours dont come cheap so instead of looking to have new set of batteries every few years, you may look to follow these simple steps to extend the life of laptop battery. 1. Always keep the battery full charged and avoid using battery support if you can use direct power line 2. At least once or twice a month, discharge the battery completely (as much as possible before the System goes off) and then charge it full if you are using NiMH battery. 3. Recharge the battery after a long period of inactivity. 4. Dont leave the fully charged battery dormant for a long. 5. Now most laptops are equipped with a switch to dim the screen, try to use it mainly while traveling. 6. If you are at home, try to avoid using CD drives for movies, music etc on battery. Try to use direct power. 7. Try to avoid multi-tasking as much as possible, mainly while traveling. It will give you more backup as CPU requires more power on multi-tasking. 8. Optimize the Power Options from control panel that suits you best. 9. If your laptop has lower RAM then try to increase it as for having lower RAM often the system requires to access the virtual memory which needs more power than physical RAM. 10. Run defragment of your system regularly as it reduces the pressure on hard disk and saves power. 11. I uses Dell studio 1535 laptop and me being a power user, the LCD screen of laptop often gets dirty. So here is an article for people who are wondering how to clean their laptop screens properly without damaging it. 12. How NOT to clean Laptop LCD screens 13. Before we start talking about how to, lets first talk about how not to clean the screen. 14. 1. Never put water on LCD screen as it will leave stains on it which wont get removed. 2. Never touch the screen with fingers, any pressure can cause dead pixels on screen. 3. Never uses synthetic clothes to clean the screen. Always uses soft cotton cloth. 4. Never uses tissue paper or any other kind of paper to clean the screen. Any scratch on the screen caused by them can never be removed. 5. Do not blow air from your mouth on the screen, it is a LCD screen, not a trophy! How to Clean Laptop Screen To properly clean your laptop screen I will highly advice you to buy Laptop LCD Cleaning Kit. In USA, it barely costs $8-10 (in India, it costs around Rs 75 to Rs 90) and is totally worth it. These LCD cleaning kits are easily available in any computer accessories shop.

How to use the Laptop Cleaning Kit 1. First Shut down your laptop. Never spray chemicals or anything on a switched on laptop. A turned off screen will also help you to see the dust better. 2. using the brush, clean the edges. Avoid putting the brush on the screen, just use it to clean the edges of laptop screen. 3. Open the cap of bottle and either spray directly on to the LCD screen (keep the distance from screen to be 15 to 30 cms) or you can spray it on the cloth and then clean it. I like the first method more, as using spray, I can uniformly put the chemical on the screen. Do make sure that you have put a cloth on the laptop keyboard and sound system. 4. Gently clean the screen with cloth now from inside to outside. Ideally you want the cloth to absorb all dust. 5. Thas it, once you are done, you should be able to see a shiny glowing LCD screen of your laptop. You can use this every week or whenever you feel like your laptop screen is getting too dirty. How to Clean Laptop LCD screen when you dont have the kit I will highly advice you to go with the laptop LCD screen cleaning kit but if you dont have it and you still want to clean the screen, here is the way to do it 1. Take a soft clean cotton cloth with no hard edges (avoid towels). Do not make it wet. 2. Switch of your laptop and clean the screen by going from inside to outside. Do not put pressure on screen. These LCD screens are very fragile and even little pressure can break them! 3. Some people to say to use isopropyl alcohol or any alcohol which vaporizes easily, I will not recommend it using anything like that. Just stick to the kit or use clean cloth to remove dust. Using any solvent can cause visible marks on your screen which can never be removed.

01. Screen Brightness Always dim the screen while working in battery mode as the brighter screen consumes more battery. Generally the Fn key is used to dim the screen. You will get the proper way on your Laptops manual. 02. Use Hibernate Sometime, we need to leave for short sessions and in such situations, most of us use the Stand by or Shut down option. But it is suggested to Hibernate your system if you are going outside for 20-30 minutes as it consumes lesser power and saves and image of your all open applications. If you are not aware about Hibernate, click here to learn XP Hibernate and Vista Hibernate. 03. Close all Unwanted Applications Often we open 4/5 programs and left them inactive. But these are consuming physical RAM as well as pagefile and CPU in background which requires continuous power. So, never left any program open if you are not using them.

04. Avoid CD/ DVD While working on battery try to avoid using CD/ DVD as much as possible. Actually CD/ DVD consume huge power especially while continuous uses like watching movies, listing songs or burning. If possible, try to perform these tasks while connected to direct power. 05. Turn off un-used hardware To get more backup from your battery, close all un-used hardware like, USB drive, Bluetooth , WIFI, Infrared etc. 06. Avoid CPU intensive Tasks Never perform any CPU intensive tasks if your laptop is running on battery. These applications are like Games, Virus Scanning, Defragmenting, CD/ DVD copy, Installation Applications etc. 07. For Centrino CPU If your laptop comes with Intel Centrino CPU then, remember to enable the Intel Speed step technology. You can know more about it from this article which has covered it very nicely.

Buy smart: Look for notebooks with low power consuming processors like the Intels CULV Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage processors or AMD processors with cool & Quiet feature. Dim screen brightness: Choose an environment with adequate lightingless brightness means youll 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 arent usin g.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 batterys 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.Sta rt > 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.