6 Tips on significantly improving laptop battery life

Image Courtesy Wired.com

“Beep!!” That’s the irky sound that I always hear whenever my laptop is low on battery especially when I’m about to finished my assignments and there no power source nearby!

Standard 6-cell battery last about 2 to 4 hours and 9-cell battery can last 4 to 7 hours. Some of the latest model especially ultrabook claims to have more than 8 hours of battery life. But if you are like me, still using a standard “cost-effective” laptop, you are always looking for ways to extend you battery life. Here are few tips to improve your battery life.

1.    Disable Bluetooth or Wifi when not in used
I hardly use Bluetooth except for transferring files and the last time that I actually use it was 3 years ago. If you are not using any Bluetooth headphone or Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, disable it. Most laptop manufacturer has built-in the function key to control the wireless component (as seen in below screenshot). You can also disable it from the Device Manager. 
 
2.    Adjust screen brightness
One of the things that consume a lot of power is your laptop screen. The brighter it is, the more power it consumes. So, it’s a good idea to lower your screen brightness so you can have longer online time ;)
 
3.    Windows: Change power plan
If you are on Windows, you can use the built-in Power Plan to manage the behavior of your laptop when plugged in and when on battery. I will always recommend people to you use Balanced power plan as it has been calibrated by the Microsoft team to provide balance performance with energy consumptions. If you are feeling adventures, you can even change the CPU maximum speed (more speed, more power) or control the amount of power allowed through USB.
 
4.    Plugged out external hard drive
An external hard drive is the same as normal hard drive. A normal hard drive will require 4 to 6 Watts on normal load but you it will require additional Watts to powered it up over USB. So, if you have no use for external drive, just plugged it out! 

5.    Disable DVD/CD Drive
Similar to Bluetooth, I hardly use my DVD-ROM nowadays. If you noticed, there are times when your CD/DVD ROM is making noise by itself even though you didn’t slot it any CD/DVD. So by disabling this, you can squeeze out more juice from your battery. You can disable it from Device Manager under Computer Management.
 
6.    Change to SSD
I wrote an article on SSD vs HDD. Which to use? SSD doesn’t have mechanical parts so it consume less power and produce less heat, making it perfect solution for those who is always on the run. With more heath produced, more energy required it cool it down and that’s one of the reason why ultrabook can offer longer lasting battery life, it’s because they are using SSD.