3/1/09

Laptop Battery Tips


Laptop battery Tips:



If you find yourself with no electrical adapter or power source and need your battery to operate for as long as possible, take good care of your laptop battery and ensure that it will be ready to work properly and efficiently in the battery mode. The general tips are listed as follows:
1.Turn off Wi-Fi and BlueTooth - Most laptops have shortcut keys to instantly disable wireless networking.
2. Don't play computer games, music or DVD movies - Multimedia activities drain laptop batteries.
3. Disconnect all external devices like PC Card modems, Firewire, USB devices and optical drives. Use the notebook touchpad instead of an external mouse.
4. Adjust your screen brightness - Dimming your display saves battery power.
5. Tweak Windows Power Options - Choose a Laptop power scheme that turns off the notebook monitor and hard disk after 10 minutes of inactivity.
6. Decrease or mute the Laptop Speaker Volume.
7. Turn off all scheduled tasks.
8. Turn off Auto-save features in Microsoft Office and other applications.
9. If your PC has a built-in wireless card, turn it off or disable it when not in use.

Looking for the longest battery life laptop? Actually, many factors affect the amount of time that a laptop battery can deliver power before it must be recharged.
How to extend laptop battery life? Here are some more tips to improve your notebook's battery life:
1. If you do not use your laptop for extended periods of time (a week or more), remove the battery pack from the laptop.
2. Do not expose the battery to high heat or freezing temperatures. Do not leave your battery in your car in the summer. Hot batteries discharge very quickly, and cold ones can't create as much power.
3. Make sure to plug your laptop charger adapter into a UPS and not directly into a power outlet or surge protector.
4. If you have a nickel-metal hydride battery, completely drain and recharge the battery once a month to maximize its capacity to hold a charge.
5. Fully charge new battery packs before use. New pack needs to be fully charged and discharged (cycled) a few times before it can condition to full capacity.
6. For laptops that work as Desktop Replacement, the battery should be re-installed every 3-4 weeks and allowed to fully discharge.

Related information:

Dell Inspiron 6000 Laptop Battery Replacement
Dell Latitude d400 Laptop Battery Replacement