how to increase your laptop battery life?

[bellin]

i got a new battery replacement for my dell laptop, i wonder if there are some ways to extend the battery life? sharing your experience with us.

[HayZee518]

I don't really think there's a cut and dry method of conserving battery life. If the battery is a NiCad certainly you can't discharge it until its almost beat, besides I don't think the computer will like it! Nickel-Metal Halide is better and a Lithium Ion is th best. Operate the laptop with the ac adapter as much as possible. When the battery is on charge don't let it heat up! Unplug it , let it cool down then put it back on charge. Oh yes check your cmos battery once in a while. When your on board clock starts to lack in time, time to change the button cell.

[Axl]

Yes, nickel, metal hydride batteries are better than Nickel cadmium, and Lithium ion are the best. Batteries have a temperature sensor in them that the charging circuitry uses to prevent overheating. So it's not necessary to unplug it, wait, then continue charging. The problem Sony batteries had was the temp sensor being in a place where the temperature wasn't being read correctly, hence they had a habit of burning up or exploding.

[Linda_w]

Originally Posted by Axl

,,, The problem Sony batteries had was the temp sensor being in a place where the temperature wasn't being read correctly, hence they had a habit of burning up or exploding.

oh my God exploding? has it happened to you??
my laptop is HP and it's battery as well,it's a little bit "old" so I use it plugged in,,, and actually never charge it,,,as there is no need =))) he he,,, cause it just doesn't keep ,,,

[Axl]

Originally Posted by Linda_w

oh my God exploding? has it happened to you??

No, it has not happened to me.

[SlowCoder]

I've heard different things about batteries. The strongest being that you don't necessarily want to keep the battery charging all the time. Instead, you can remove the battery once it's charged. Then when you need it plug it back in to peak the charge.

If you want to know how to increase the single-charge work time of a battery on a laptop, the most energy hungry single part of your laptop is your LCD display backlight. If you decrease the brightness to the minimum comfortable, you'll get more time out of your charge. Other things you can do are set your OS to turn things like your hard drive, USB and display off when idle.

[itachis.eyes]

Originally Posted by bellin

i got a new battery replacement for my dell laptop, i wonder if there are some ways to extend the battery life? sharing your experience with us.

well what you can do is don't leave your computer plugged in all the time, and every few charges or so let the battery drain completely and then charge it back up again to 100%

[bfuller83]

I have seen some bios that have a battery calibration program. I ran it on my work laptop and it seemed to work great for a while (like 2 weeks) then it was back to normal lasting an hour and dead.

[Psycho0124]

Another good way to maximize the life of the battery is to minimize the current draw you put on it while it's in use. Lap-tops are feature rich little devices and all those features require power to operate. Things like wireless internet. Bluetooth stuff. Even audio and video settings can affect power consumption. Vista is bad about using gfx intensive gui elements and the increased GPU usage to render all that immediately translates to added power consumption (and additional heat production in the unit which can also hurt your battery). To sum up, turn off some of the eye-candy elements you can live without. Disable features you aren't using. If you're not using the audio, muting it should power down the little amp in there and save a little more. All this may only add up to a few dozen mA but in the long run, it will produce less heat and almost certainly survive more charge/discharge cycles as a consequence.

[comfortnow]

1. Lower the brightness of your LCD light, it consumes a lot of power
2. Switch off the screen saver
3. Avoid USB devices, as it drains your battery power.
4. Avoid leaving your laptop under sunlight as heat heat kills battery power
5. Remove the batteries and store in a cool place when your laptop is not in use.