Today I want to write on something that has been a problem for laptop users. Many users complain that their battery runs down quickly as a result, they cannot work without electricity especially in my country where power has been a major issue.

Below you will find some tips that will help u preserve and prolong the life of your battery.

1. There are many devices that are not used always e.g Bluetooth, WIFI, webcam etc. Don’t leave such devices on always; turn them off when they are not in use. It will be wise to also remove any USB device that is not in use.

2. Avoid using the hard drive unnecessarily. For example if you are using Microsoft Word or any of the packages, and you set it to auto save your documents every 5 minutes, consider changing it to auto save say 10 or 15 minutes.

3. We are all music lovers, and most times we are tempted to play our favorite CDs or DVDs while doing other work on the laptop. The truth is that the drive draws a lot of power while running, to avoid that, convert your music to Mp3 files and play them from the hard drive instead.

4. Don’t use your laptop in an uncomfortable environment i.e. an environment where the temperature is high. Hot temperatures make the battery to discharge quickly.

5 When running on battery, try as much to reduce the backlight of your screen using the power-control utilities (brightness, contrast), mostly found on the keyboard.

6 There is no point using leaving all programs open when you are not using them, they all draw their power from the battery. So close up unused applications or programmes.

7 There is always a belief that laptop should always be carried on the laps, or used while on the bed, or rug carpet. No matter the pleasure we derive from all these, they are not healthy for the life of your battery because they don’t allow proper air flow or circulation as a result causes overheating. So always use your laptop on a hard surface to allow air circulation.

8. Standby and Hibernation serve different purposes, Standby keeps your laptop partially on while drawing some power from the battery while hibernation puts your laptop partially off and saves your last state of use without drawing power from the battery but enabling you to resume where you stop. So when leaving your laptop for just few minutes use standby but if you are leaving it for a longer time, make use of the hibernate function.

9 Limit the graphic usage. If you will be doing much graphic works, consider using a graphic or video card.

If you apply these simple tips, you consciously extend the life of your laptop battery.

I f you have other tips, share it with us.

Culled from www.okeychigbu.com