Laptops

Tips for longer battery run time in laptops

Remove battery

If you are going to use your laptop for extended periods of time on mains power, remove your battery altogether.  

Screen

Turn the brightness and contrast-control down as far as you can stand it.  

Turn off and/or Remove components you are not using

Turn off internal/external modems when not in use. Leaving your PC card modem plugged in can reduce your effective battery time by up to 25%. Remove PCMCIA cards when not in use.

Disable helpers, wizards & other automatic features

Software functions that automatically format text, check spelling, and recalculate your spreadsheet all draw down power.  

Use a disk-caching utility

Install a utility program like Norton Utilities or SmartDrive to cut down on disk-accessing time. The cache saves the most-often used or most recently used information to a special virtual memory cache. Then, instead of battery-depleting hard-drive accesses, the computer uses the information in the cache instead.  

Memory

If possible, add more RAM (Random Access Memory), this will take the strain off the hard drive because when you run out of RAM, the operating system used virtual memory, which is on the hard drive. This slows down the laptop greatly, as the hard drive is slower than RAM. This not only will increase battery life, but it will make your laptop run more smoothly

Clean contacts

Once a month, clean the leads (silver or gold metal strips on end of battery) with rubbing alcohol to ensure that your battery is making a good clean contact with the contacts in your system.

Lead acid batteries

Never leave your battery in a discharged state. Always charge your battery immediately after use even if you only used it for a short time.

Store the battery in a cool, dry place.

Never run the battery fully down, as this will damage the battery.

Only use the correct charger that was supplied by your equipment or one specifically designed for your type of battery or you may  damage your battery