Top Battery Conservation Tips

Overview

Laptops, notebooks, netbooks and tablet PC’s use battery power to allow portability and mobility. The number of hours you can expect your battery to last from a full charge, will be determined by several factors:

The size of the battery

usually referred to as a number of cells (4 cell, 6-cell). The more cells the longer the battery lasts.

The type of battery

Common types are: Lithium Ion, and nickel metal hydride. Lithium batteries last longer and are lighter.

User settings and preferences

This area offers the user the ability to compromise between performance and battery life. These options follow in our discussion.

User Settings and Preferences

Turn dwn the LCD Brightness

Your LCD is the notebook’s biggest battery hog. Turn it down to the minimum readable level using a provided keyboard button or the slider in the Display Control Panel.

Put it to sleep

Don’t wait for your configured ‘suspend’ mode to take effect. Put your computer to sleep maually if you’re not using it. This will shut off the LCD, hard disk and processor but perserve everything in RAM so you can resume working where you left off in only seconds.

Hibernate

If you’ll be away from your notebook for a longer period of time, actavate its ‘suspend to disk or hibernate’ mode, which saves the contents of RAM to the hard disk before shutting down. This will save even more power than ‘suspend’ mode.

Turn off wireless access

Many notebooks feature buttons for turning the wireless LAN feature on and off. Turn of wireless if you’re not using it.

Remove your external devices

Remove all USB flash drives, external hard drives, zip drives, etc. if you are not using them.

Don’t watch DVD’s or play CD’s

This may seem obvious, but using these devices will drain your battery very fast.

Fully drain and charge a battery at least every few months

While battery memory effects have been reduced, they are not gone. When you buy a new battery, drain it completely and charge it three times before use. Also fully drain and charge it at least every few months. This will recalabrate the set.

Power Options

In the Control Panel under Power Options you can customize your mobile PC for several Power saving features:

Turn off the Display after a period of time

Use speed step (lower processor speed when possible)

Auto adjust display brightness

Put the computer to sleep after a period of time

Summary

As you can see, the user has the ability to extend battery life through settings and preferences. Current mobile PC batteries can last as long as 5 hours depending on the size, type and user settings.