Increase Battery life

Hi,
To increase your battery life follow this instruction-

1. Ship shape with a defrag- The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are
going to put on the hard drive and your battery.  Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly.

2. Kill the resource gobblers- End the background processes that are not vital. Monitor the
resource usage through a “˜Ctrl-Alt-Del’ which brings up the Windows Task Manager (in
Windows). If you’re not on the internet, it is safe to shut down the immediate non-essential
programs running in the taskbar like the antivirus and the firewall. Weed out unnecessary
programs running as start-ups by launching the System Configuration Utility from Run ““
Msconfig ““ Tab: Startup. Uncheck the programs which you don’t want to launch and reboot thecomputer once.

3. Dim your screen – Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some
even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest
level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

4. Pause the scheduled tasks- It may be a defrag or a virus scan, but make sure it is
scheduled for a time when you are near a power outlet. If not then nix them for the moment.

5. Unplug external devices-USB devices are the biggest drainers of battery power. Unplug all
external devices like an external mouse, PC cards, Wi-Fi, external speakers, Bluetooth and
even an attached iPod.

6. Empty the CD/DVD Drives- Even if you don’t intend to use it, don’t leave any CD/DVDs as leftovers in the drives. A spinning drive sucks battery power like a sponge.

7. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory.  Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

8. Go local- Desist using the DVD/external drives while running on batteries. Shift the content to the hard drive or run using (free) virtual drives like Pismo File Mount or even Microsoft’s Virtual CD ROM Control Panel.

9. Kill the sounds- Mute the speakers and try avoiding the use of multimedia software to maximize the battery life. Installed sound schemes also drain a battery perceptibly.

10. Visit Power Options- Get familiar with power management through the “˜Power Options’ applet in the Control Panel. Both XP and Vista come with advanced power management features which shut off components like the monitor and/or the hard drive after specified intervals. This again depends on the chosen “˜Power Schemes’ (for XP) in the same applet. For instance in XP, “˜Max Battery’ under Power Schemes can be selected for maximum battery optimization.

11. Hibernate is better than Sleep-In the Stand By mode (or sleep mode), the computer turns of the hard drive and the display but memory remains active while the CPU slows down. This draws on the battery. In contrast, hibernation mode is better because the computer saves the current state and shuts itself down completely thus saving power.

12. Update software and drivers-This sounds a bit incongruous but then newer drivers and software are often designed to be more efficient (and hopefully less resource hungry). See more in this link- http://www.techyv.com/questions/how-can-i-overcome-my-laptop-battery-problems
 
Regards,
Josef,