BOOST UP THE LIFE SPAN OF YOUR LAPTOPS BATTERY

How to increase the life span of your laptop's battery

THE PROBLEM:

My Laptops battery autonomy decreases from day to day.

   

THE PRINCIPLE:

People use laptops for a lot of reasons, ranging from its portability to its reliability, but the major reason is the power autonomy it provides. Did you know that a laptop battery is desinged to last for 18 to 36 months, period through which its autonomy will decrease at a very slow, non alarming and steady rate as time goes.

With most laptops you can enjoy as much as a 2 hour autonomy if your laptop is properly charged, and there are even laptops that can last up to 10 hours, but now it is very common ,to see a laptop that used to last 3 hours only lasting 30 minutes, and see a laptop that used to last 2 hours only lasting 5 minutes. This decrease rate is alarming and too great to be normal, reason for this article. Below ,I will list some tips to boost your laptop battery life.

THE SOLUTION:

TIP 1) NEVER EVER let your laptop battery get fully empty

Some people think that leaving the battery of their laptop to get totally empty from time to time will boost up their batteries performance and life span but that is a myth! It does just the contrary. In fact, the lithium-ion batteries (the type of battery found in laptops) loose about up to 20% of their autonomy each time they are totally emptied because it causes a chemical degradation of the batteries components. That is why most operating systems have a threshold limit beyond which they automatically shut down the computer (usually 9%) to avoid the battery from going empty. The idea is to increase this limit. Below is a  video showing you how to do that on Windows 7. You can download the video here

 

In this video, I reduce the low battery and critical battery levels to 15% and 10% respectively and set the critical and low battery actions to "hibernate" so the system will start low battery notification earlier (at 15% rather than the default 10%) and will hibernate when the critical value of 10% is reached. You can modify this setting to your convenience.  

TIP 2) Avoid Using Too Many Applications Simultaneously You should avoid using too many applications simultaneously. By this, I mean you should not over multitask your laptop. The amount of tasks your laptop can handle simultanouesly depends on your CPU clock speed and RAM but running too many applications at a time uses up much more energy and hence worns out the battery at a greater rate. To illustrate what i mean by over multitasking I will take the example of someone wathching a  movie and from time to time changing tabs to browse the net, play the latest video game, listen to his favorite music and doing some rough work on Adobe Photoshop CS5 on his laptop. Even if your CPU and RAM can handle all that (recent laptops can), it remaind DEADLY for your battery.  

TIP 3) Use Your Autonomy ONLY When Neccessary You are at home for example, or at school or anywhere there are power switches, why use your batteries autonomy when you have your power cable with you? Only use your battery autonomy in situations where you cant do otherwise.  

TIP 4) Reduce Your Laptop Brightness to a Comfortable, but Battery Saving, Level You can also boost your laptop battery life by reducing your laptop’s brightness. The brighter your laptop is the more of your battery is used up to satisfy its brightness, and the more impact on your battery life span. You can significantly reduce the chances of your laptop battery experiencing any problems by adjusting its brightness, or by choosing one of the power-saver plans that comes with your laptop. The video in tip 1 shows you how you can do this.  

TIP 5) Dont Let Your Laptop Run When You Are Not Using It Another step you should take towards saving your laptop battery is to ensure your laptop is not running when you are not using it. A lot of us make the mistake of letting our laptopsrun when we are not using it, and this can have a lasting impact on their batteries life span. I am not saying you should shut down your laptop completely if you want to take a 5 or 10 minute break before getting back to work, because I know there are situations when you want or need to take a short break on a particular task, but I am saying you can and should configure your laptop to go to sleep mode when you don’t touch it for a particular period of time say, 10 minutes. By doing this, you will be able to save your laptop battery life without your work being affected. The video in tip 1 shows you how you can do this. 

Hope It Helps! Stay Tuned! 

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