8 Tips in Extending Your Laptop’s Battery Life

Only diamonds last forever because laptop batteries definitely wont. After an hour or two, laptops will start to notify you that the batteries are running out of juice and you need to find an outlet asap to recharge them. When you constantly move from one place to another, every minute of running time is precious.

These tips will help you and your laptop make it through the day:

• Hotter battery means faster deterioration. Your laptop’s number one opponent is HEAT. At all times, you have to  keep your laptop cool. To lessen the heat, a cooling pad will combat the heat. If you do not know what to look for in a cooling pad, you can read through this buying guide.
• Avoid multitasking. We are so used to running various applications simultaneously whenever we are on our desktop computers. These applications and services consume battery. Prioritize the apps that you really need to use and close unnecessary applications that that you can resume at a later time. Reserve your cherished battery life for the urgent tasks.
• Go for simple applications. If you cannot avoid to multitask, at least, learn use simple applications. For instance, whenever you are planning to write a proposal, it’s better to draft it in a notepad first than typing directly in Microsoft Word. Select a simple text editor over a RAM heavy application. Another tip is to do the intense gaming later because games consume a lot of RAM too.
• Tweak your power options. Typically, your default power plan is set to balanced. Edit it to energy saver or power saver. Whenever you are mobile, avoid the high performance power plan. This may utilize more battery life. When not in use, turn off your display or put your computer to sleep. Moreover, there is no need to set the laptop’s brightness to its highest configuration if you are in a well-lighted room.
• Shut your computer down. If you are not using your computer for long time, it’s better to turn it off because the standby mode will still use up battery life. Boot up your computer when you are ready to resume.
• When not in use, turn off wireless connections. Whether it is the Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth connection, if you do not intend to use it, disable it to avoid depleting the battery.
• Disable unused ports. Temporarily disable certain ports like USB, VGA, Ethernet because these ports can affect your battery life. For Windows users, open your Device Manager to know more about these ports.
• Defragment your hard disk. The more fragmented your HDD is, the more it needs to work. Therefore, it consumes battery life. For Windows users, it is advisable to defrag if your hard disk is 10% fragmented. (You can learn more about it  by checking this guide.) For Mac users, this does not apply as it automatically defrags whenever necessary.

At the end of the day, batteries really won’t last long and they are only for back up purposes. It allows you to check some files, or review a presentation whenever you are on the road. So, know your priorities because batteries will wear off.