• Defrag regularly - Deframenting leads to the faster operation of your hard drive – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.
• Cut down on programs running in the background. – Applications like Itune, Desktop Search, etc. All these add to the CPU load & cut down battery life. Shut down everything that you don’t require right now!• Dim your screen – Modern 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.
• Cut down external devices – USB devices (including your mouse and webcams) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use.
• Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are even worse in this regard. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they’re not actively being used.
Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives rather than optical ones.
• Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
• Take care of your battery –Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Exercise the Battery.
• Hibernate not standby – Though placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume from wherever you left off, it doesn’t save as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and then completely shut itself down.
• Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner.
• Set up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and adjust them so that power usage is optimized ( Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect option if possible).
• Go easy on the PC demands – Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a CD/DVD.
• Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.
