Top 10 Laptop Battery Tips

Your laptop battery is the lifeblood of your portable computer work. The longer a laptop battery can stay juiced up, the more work we can get done between charges. And when the battery eventually dies, it can be costly to replace. More so if you have an older laptop whose parts are hard to find.

So in order to keep your laptop running strong, you'll need to take good care of your battery. It's easy to neglect the laptop battery; they don't stand out as much as most notebook accessories. As they say, out of sight, out of mind.

To arm you with the knowledge you need to maintain your beloved laptop, we've come up with this list of essential Top 10 tips for extending the life of your laptop's battery!


1. Avoid The "Memory Effect"

Older laptops that use nickel-metal hybrid batteries are tricky in how they are charged. If you frequently use battery power for a short period of time before recharging it, the battery life will gradually shorten.

For example, if you typically use only 15% of the battery's power before recharging it back to full capacity, the batter will "remember" this habit and over time will only make that 15% available. That means 85% of the battery's full capacity will become wasted. For older batteries, it's best to not recharge it until it reaches below 25%. This will improve the battery's chances of "remembering" its actual full capacity.

Laptop owners with newer Lithium-Ion batteries shouldn't worry about this phenomenon. In fact, a full depletion of battery charge is only recommended for every 30 recharges.


2. Power Options

You can easily adjust the power settings in your laptop to optimize your battery power usage. For Windows users, access Power Options in your Control Panel. From there, select the Max Battery power scheme to get the most power from the battery. Adjust the wait time before the laptop's screen or hard drive is shut off.


Mac users can click on System Preferences from the Apple Menu. When running on battery power, select the Power Saver power plan. When your laptop is plugged into an AC adapter, switch the power plan to High-Performance. You can adjust when the screen shuts off from here as well.


3. Keep The Laptop Cool

As is true for any type of hardware, heat is a killer. Never place your laptop on an insulated surface like a pillow or blanket. Avoid using your laptop in areas where the temperature exceeds 80°F. Make a habit of blowing compressed air through your laptop's fans and vents to clear out any dust or hair. And if at all possible, get a cooling pad to rest under your laptop to insure a cooling airflow.


4. Hibernate, Not Stand By

Two key areas to pay attention to while you're managing your laptop's power options are Hibernate and Stand By. Sending your system to Stand By will save some power while the laptop is idle, but many functions remain active.

When your laptop goes into hibernation, it saves the state that your system is in before shutting itself off. When the laptop switches back on, that state is send back into memory so you can pick up where you left off while saving significantly more power in the meantime.


5. Save To The Hard Drive

It may not look like it, but CD- and DVD-ROM drives use a lot of power to keep spinning. If you need to access multiple or large files that are stored on a disc, save the files to the hard drive first. You'll save a lot of power reading the files from the hard drive than keeping the optical drive's motor continuously spinning.


6. Defrag Often


Since we recommend reading your data from the hard drive, you'll need to make sure the hard drive is in optimal shape. The easiest thing to do is to defragment the hard drive every week or two. By defragmenting our hard drive, data that's used most often is kept close together. As a result, the hard drive won't have to work as hard to gather up that data, thus using less power.

As a bonus, you'll notice a vast improvement in load time!


7. Avoid Multitasking

The more tasks that your system has to juggle, the more battery power you'll eat up. If possible, try to only have one or two applications running at a time. Using the Task Manager in Windows, shut down all the background processes that you aren't currently using.

Multitasking applies to hardware as well! Minimize the amount of devices you have connected to the laptop at a time. Each USB device you have connected to the laptop uses battery power to operate. Obviously, it may not be wise to charge the battery in your cell phone or iPod through a USB cable while your laptop itself is running off battery power.


8. Dim Your Screen

Your laptop's monitor screen is like a big, flat light bulb. Turn the brightness setting of your laptop's display as low as you can comfortably see. If you're using your laptop in a dark room, you should be able to turn the brightness levels to their lowest setting while still seeing the display clearly.

As mentioned before, set the display to turn off shortly after you stop working on the laptop. Avoid relying on a screensaver while on battery power, since they tend to keep the screen's backlight on unnecessarily as your laptop sits idle.


9. Disable WiFi

If you're not accessing the internet while you're running on battery power, disable your laptop's wireless internet adapter. Even if you're not actively working online, the wireless adapter will continue to seek and connect with nearby WiFi hotspots.


10. Disconnect The Battery

If you're at home or anywhere that you can connect your laptop to a laptop AC adapter, you may want to remove the battery once it's been fully recharged. This will decrease the risk of overloading the battery. Store the battery in a cool place, since heat can damage the battery even when not in use. A fully-charged battery should be used again within three weeks in order to maintain longevity.

While your battery is disconnected, it's important to keep the connectors clean. Use light amounts of rubbing alcohol on the connectors of the battery and the laptop (just make sure the laptop is turned off first!).


One habit we like to encourage: Always keep a spare! While traveling with your laptop, keep a spare laptop battery packed with you in case your first battery gets used up.

Additionally, we recommend carrying a spare laptop AC adapter wherever you take your laptop so you're never too far from a recharge.

If you're experiencing strange power glitches in your laptop that you can't explain, we can take a look at it for you! Our laptop repair service includes checking your laptop's battery or DC power jack. For any questions, send us an email or call 919-620-6886.