How to Preserve Laptop Battery Juice

One of the biggest issues with laptop computers is battery life. Ever have your laptop go dead, at the worst possible moment? You are not alone. This is a common occurrence with laptop batteries, and of course, they fail us at the worst times. Also, there is the cost of battery replacement, which can run high. But, all hope is not lost and there are some concrete steps that will prolong the life of laptop batteries and make sure that it's ready to go when you need.

1. Use the A/C adapter via wall plug whenever possible. This many seem very obvious, however many times laptop users become so used to mobile computing, that even when at home they do not take advantage of a close by plug.

2. Battery Charging: It is better to charge your battery 100% and then use up all that juice and recharge it again. This is especially true for used cheap laptops.

3. Program Overload: Run only the programs you are using at the time of use. Programs that run in the background use more system resources and drain laptop battery life.

4. Laptop Temperature: Make sure to read your laptops temperature ranges and not let it go beyond what is recommended. When your laptop is hot then turn it off and let it cool down. You can also use cooling devices, like laptop cooling trays and pads that will make sure your laptop is cool and not sucking extra battery juice.

5. Disable unnecessary programs from start up: Many programs that we do not even use, start automatically on computer boot, such as Microsoft Office Suites. Even anti virus can be disabled if you are not logging onto the Internet during that work session and do not have an open Internet connection.

6. Plan ahead: If you are going to be mobile and need to use your laptop for email checking, word processing and other work tasks then make sure you have a full battery and do not drain it by hanging out online, or watching a DVD. Those activities will deplete your battery and leave you stranded when you really need your laptop.

7. Work with peripherals when you can use a wall plug: Tasks such as uploading music to iPods or any devices that require the use of a USB for example that use a lot of power. So it is best to perform these tasks, when you can draw power from the AC adapter instead of using laptop battery juice.

8. Adjust screen brightness:: Adjust the screen brightness as low as your eyes can take and you will see a big improvement in battery life.

9. De-fragment your hard disk:Your laptop will use less resources when pulling up files and therefore use less power.

10. Power Saving Features: Stand by mode uses power. If your laptop has the hibernate feature, then use it. If not, turn it off whenever possible or feasible.

Taking steps such as those above will secure more battery life and a better mobile computing experience.