9 tips to extend battery life on your laptop

The batteries on our portable gadgets leave us the worst time! But there are some things you can do to get more time in laptop you.

9-tips-for-longer-laptop-battery-life

Some of the techniques we recommend are for those moments that are needed urgently to extend the battery life, while others are rather precautionary measures, which is good to apply before the battery life reaches its last.

Possibly, some of the strategies we will describe overlap, however, even when the actions you need to follow are common, the reasons why you need to do so may be different.

Short-term strategies

If you are at difficult position at a given time, there are some things you can do in order to prolong life of the battery.

None of the following actions will really increase the remaining battery power, on the contrary reduce the amount of energy that your laptop uses, saving you a few extra minutes before the battery is fully discharged. The key phrase in these cases is consumption energy, and you must limit it to the minimum possible.

1. Turn on battery saving mode on your laptop or loperation eco

Both of these functions are designed precisely for these cases, and so they will undertake to do so some changes are automatically made to extend the useful life of the battery - some of which we will do here as well. This profile will adjust your laptop settings and transfer the subsystems to low-power and consumption modes.

Once you turn on the automatic battery-saver tool, there are still many steps you need to do to get better performance. This happens disabling unnecessary devices, adjusting settings to reduce power consumption, closing unnecessary applications and processes, and adjusting your activities so they use less energy.

2. Turn off devices and ports that you are not using

The easiest way to limit your energy consumption is just switching off different devices. Start by disconnecting any peripherals you do not need [such as a USB mouse or an external hard drive] and disabling the most energy-intensive subsystems and peripherals which are not necessarily at a given moment, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth receivers, graphics processors and unused optical drives.

Warning: Before disabling any subsystem or device, make sure that the device is not in use and it is not necessary in the portable operation. For example, you do not want to disable the hard drive from which the operating system is running or Wi-Fi if you connect to the local network.

To disable unused devices in Windows, open Control Panel and find Device Manager. There, the individual ones ομαδοποιούνται ανά κατηγορία. Για παράδειγμα, στο Network Adapters [Κάρτες δικτύου] συχνά περιλαμβάνονται εξίσου ο LAN adapter, που παρέχει τη συνδεσιμότητα μέσω και το Wi-Fi για networking.

The top four energy-saving candidates are the graphics card [in Display Adapters], the optical drive [in DVD / CD-ROM Drives], and the Ethernet and Wi-Fi adapters [in Network Adapters]. Find the device you want to turn off in the relevant category. Right-click on the device name and select Disable from the drop-down menu.

While in Device Manager, you can also disable any unused door B.C. serial. The actual impact on battery life will be negligible, however, you will probably be able to save some extra work time.

3. Adjust the settings

Both screen as well as the keyboard are the most essential when working on a laptop. You can, however, adjust the settings for each of them to reduce power consumption. A source that consumes electricity and that we often do not take into account is backlight keyboard. Unless you are in a dark place and you absolutely need backlighting, turn it off completely.

The screen is the next energy-intensive part of the laptop, which of course does not have to operate at 100% brightness or at full resolution. Many laptops have hotkeys to adjust the brightness of the screen, otherwise you can adjust it from the Control Panel. By reducing the projection to 50% or less when the battery is empty, you will be able to add a significant extra operating time.

Finally, lower or turn off the sound. If you still need it, lower the level as much as possible and prefer a pair of headphones instead of the laptop's speakers. Whenever possible, just put the laptop in silence. In this way, the speakers will not consume any current, so you will get a little more valuable battery time.

4. Turn off applications and processes

Battery life does not depend only on hardware. Multiple applications and various processes running on the system also cheer on its autonomy. As with the devices, start by turning off anything that is not being used.

In Windows, first take a look at System tray, the collection of icons in the lower-right corner of the desktop next to the clock. On the left side of the screen, select the icon to show the hidden icons and see which applications run in the background.

Open it Task Manager [Task Manager] by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc, and select Task Manager from the menu. Once you enter Task Manager, see open applications-you may find that one or two programs have run out of operation just because you forgot to close a window.

Then go to the tab Processes [Processes]. Here you will see the processes running on your computer. While some of these are necessary, others, such as those related to music and video playback or storage cloud services [such as Dropbox or Google Drive], you can turn them off without any hesitation.

For the MacBook, the process differs slightly. Look for a menu called System Preferences> Users & Groups [Menu Preferences> Users & Groups] Login items. Turn off any power-hungry programs you no longer need, or disable them such as automatically starting Google Chrome at startup.

You can also see which programs consume large amounts of energy at any time, by pressing the Option key, and then clicking battery indicator on the Menu bar. Alternatively, you can open the Activity Monitor utility and see a list of all programs and processes that you currently have open, and which ones use the most energy. You can stop these processes by selecting the program, and then clicking the Stop icon. The Power Nap is an Apple OS X feature that controls the activity of your email and Twitter feeds while the system is in sleep mode. If you want to maximize battery life, it would be wise to disable this feature.

5. Simplify

Another way to extend your battery life is by simplifying your own actions. Multitasking is nice when the notebook's battery is full, but running several programs at the same time significantly charges the processor and consumes more power than the battery. Customize the use of your computer by running one application at a time and avoiding programs that consume system resources.

Start with "single-tasking": if you need to type a text, close any other program. The result will be longer battery life if, for example, Spotify does not work in the background. If you have to keep playing some music files, prefer them local saved files rather than streaming media - will still require extra energy to play, but streaming through Wi-Fi also uses the wireless communication of the laptop.

You can also benefit if you choose simpler tools for the same tasks, such as a plain text file instead of a Word document. With fewer features and with none of Word's automatic actions [like spell check and auto save], you can finish writing with significantly less power consumption.

Also, it is advisable to completely avoid some of the activities as they are tools processing photo and video, which significantly charge the processor and graphics card, and are particularly energy intensive.

Long-term strategies

With the following tips, you will turn your system into one energy-efficient device, while saving the useful time of a single charge, as well as extending the total battery life.

6. Care and battery supply

It all starts with care which you have to give to the battery itself. If your laptop has a removable battery, make sure you do not damage any of its contact points. The contacts connect the laptop to the battery and, if soiled or damaged, it can reduce or even stop the power flow. You yourself can clean contact points using a cotton swab moistened with little alcohol, but the damaged contacts will need professional care.

Previously, experts advised to we charge the battery only until 80% and do not leave it constantly in its charger. However, most of these tips are now considered outdated and find application to older nickel-hydride batteries but not to lithium-ion and lithium polymers currently in use.

While modern batteries do not require you to worry about their charging frequency, it is advisable to occasionally discharge them completely through normal use, using the device until it goes out or almost goes out because the battery is empty.

Finally, take care of it temperature. Heat will shorten battery life, as well as subsystems, so take steps to provide optimum air and cooling flow. The biggest problems come from airway blocking. Dust accumulation is a problem that you can encounter by cleaning the air vents and the laptop fan. Use a compressed air product to remove dust. The most common problem that occurs is when you use your laptop on pillow or blanket, both of which block the fan and keep the heat inside the appliance out of the way. Use your laptop only at flat surfaces such as a desk or a table, and a laptop stand will make the difference when you need to use the device on the bed.

7. tune in

The next step is to make sure the laptop does the most efficient use of energy. Some simple tasks maintenance and upgrading will not only help your battery last longer, but will also result in an overall faster system.

For starters, do it regularly reconstruction on your hard drive, in order to make data recovery more efficient. Here we should note to DO NOT attempt defragmentation in one SSD, as it will reduce its useful life.

An active disk consumes more power than an inactive one, and by defragmenting your hard drive, you reduce the amount of time it takes to access data. Over time, as you add and remove files from your system, data is written asynchronously to the hard drive, scattered in various parts of it. These "naughty" written [or fragmented] data require extra time and energy to access this information during regular use. Disk defragmentation is the digital counterpart of your closet organization, since everything is clearer and easier to access. Such a the Windows 7 and 8 Have automatic tools that rebuild your disc at regular intervals, but it is good to at least confirm that this feature is enabled and runs normally.

The efficiency of your disc improves on the class that is prevalent in it. Take care of the good form of your computer by regularly removing various programs that you no longer need.

8. Upgrade

Another option is to leave the hard disk and yes upgrade on SSD. SSDs use flash memory and have no moving parts, saving energy automatically. You will also get rid of problems related to fragmentation, the Achilles heel of hard disks.

Upgrading to SSDs improves battery life and battery life speed of the system, as SSDs offer faster boot times and better performance than traditional disks.

End, increase it RAM on your system. RAM stores data for short-term usage, like about an SSD. The more data can be stored in RAM, the less system will be able to search and retrieve that data on the hard drive or SSD.

9. Backup battery

Of course, the easiest way to ensure that you will never run out of battery is to always carry a backup or an external battery. For laptops with removable batteries, the simplest option is backup. You can order it directly from the manufacturer or buy it from a third-party manufacturer at a cost that is usually well below from 100 euros.

Another, a similar option, is to buy an external battery. Although it is technically a battery, these external power sources connected to your laptop just like the charger. The "power banks"As they are called, for laptops are not very widespread in our country as opposed to mobile phones. Their average cost is around € 150.

Source: e-pcmag.gr

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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