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How to extend battery life on your notebook

Notebook

How to extend battery life on your laptop

 

Today laptops are not only more energy efficient but also have much better batteries. No more are the days of 2 hours of usage before a recharge was necessary.  Today 4 to 6 hour battery life is not uncommon. But wouldn’t it be nice to get  8 hours.
All laptops since Windows XP have come with the ability to regulate power consumption.  To find these options would be as simple as clicking on control panel and find the power options icon.  The power settings console usually come with built in options which you can choose like, balanced, high powered, on battery and etc…
The number one cause of batty drainage is our screen, by dimming the screen you will absolutely increase battery life.
Secondly, in advance settings of the power console, you can also decrease the processor speed. The lower the speed the longer the battery life.  The trade off is that your computer will run slower. But if your doing simple word processing, do you really need the pc running like a speed demon?
Thirdly, batteries run much more efficient if your notebook is cool, keep your notebook well ventilated.  Place a book at the far end of your laptop raising the end an inch or so.
Fourthly, only run programs you need, having multiple programs running uses more memory and processing power which include hard drive usage.
Lastly, turn of wireless and blue tooth if you are not using them. Additionally any USB devices that are attached, such a pen drives, printers, scanners etc. even though your not using them, they do drain the battery.
Sometime all of the above can help but it’s not enough. Manufactures do offer extended life batteries in most cases.  They tend to be bulkier and heavier, but do last a lot more time.