So you bought your brand new laptop which is equipped with all the latest features like Bluetooth, Wi-if, etc. That's great! The configuration serves you more than what you need and above all the laptop looks so cute. The size of the laptop makes it so handy, the keypad comes in your favorite color and everything looks so nice. You started working on your laptop and Gosh! There is a power-cut. But your laptop keeps on working by automatically switching itself to the plugged-in battery resource. You are happy. However, you want to check whether the battery is full or not by pointing your cursor to the battery icon. It is showing 99%. Good! But what you need to do to keep your battery showing the same storage levels even after two years? Read further to know the solution. Lithium-ion Battery Most of the laptops now a day are equipped with Lithium-ion batteries. Though there are Nickel-cadmium, Nickel metal hydride, etc, after the invention of Lithium-ion battery, because of its efficiency most of the laptop manufacturers are selling it along with their respective laptops. Why Lithium-ion battery? Because it provides high energy density, runtime, and is light in weight. To run a power-sucking laptop, a battery with high energy density is required. The runtime of a laptop battery is based on what sort of applications you run. If you run basic applications for writing, reading, copying, chatting, etc, then your laptop battery runtime will be high compared to running a complex application that has a huge number crunching requirement. The Problem The problem with the laptop battery arises when you start using your laptop as a Desktop Replacement. In other words, regularly using the laptop for extended hours (say 10/12 hours) on AC power along with the battery plugged-in. If you are using alternatively both the AC power and battery for long hours regularly, then there are so many chances that your battery life will go down. It is not because of your alternative usage with AC power, but by the heat that gets generated by your laptop during its operation. The life of a battery is more dependent on the temperature rather than its regular charging and discharging functions. On an average, a laptop battery (genuine!) will provide service for 1-1.5 years even if you use it roughly without taking any precautionary measures. You can extend your battery's life by more than 2 years if you follow the following said measures. Precautionary Measures The only solution to extend your laptop battery's precious lifetime is to use it only when you are in need of it. Means, if you have AC power available for your power requirements and you are using laptop as your Desktop Replacement, then remove the battery from your laptop after charging it moderately (40%), wrap it in a plastic cover, and store it in a cool place. After every 3 weeks, religiously, plug-in your battery into your laptop and charge it for sometime before you switch from your AC power to your battery. For the next few hours, allow you laptop to suck power from your battery until it gets drained of all its stored power and shuts down you laptop. Then, plug-in the AC power into your laptop, start charging your battery up to a moderate level (say 40%), switch off your laptop to remove the battery and store it in a cool place after wrapping it in a plastic cover. You need to do this religiously for every 3 weeks in order to extend your laptop battery's life considerably by 2 more years. Summary In summary, a laptop battery is so costly and its life so precious that we cannot ignore the precautionary measures which makes it possible to extend its lifetime by 2 more years. That means, by following the above said measures, you can use your laptop battery for about 3 years on an average. Good Luck!
In the interests of saving your sanity, here are some tips for increasing battery life, so you can finally cut the cord once in a while.
Tips for Older Batteries
To start with, turn your screen brightness down. A bright screen may be necessary on a bright summer day, but most of us don't do a lot of computer time sitting in the sun. A good way to determine brightness is turn it down until it's a bit too dark, then wait five minutes. Once your eyes have adjusted to the new screen setting, if you need to, you can turn the brightness up incrementally until it suits your current location.
Next, make sure you defrag your hard drive regularly. Defragmenting makes the computer run more efficiently, and the more efficiently your laptop runs, the less power it uses. You should defrag anywhere between once a month and once a week.
When you're using your computer, try to run only one program at a time. (Bonus: the fewer programs you run, the less distracted you'll be from your work.) The more programs you run, the faster your battery will run down, and computer games especially use up a lot of power, so play them sparingly when you're away from a plug.
In addition to shutting down programs, you can shut down devices. A wi-fi connection is a major power hog. You can shut it down when ever you are not using internet based programs, and add quite a bit of battery life. Avoiding using the disk drives will also save a lot of power. If you need something off a disk, load it just long enough to save it to the hard drive, and then pull the disk.
Along the same lines, don't use standby mode, if you can avoid it. Hibernation saves your settings and shuts down, while standby continues to use power.
Finally, you can disable your unneeded start up items. In addition to cutting down on the annoying start up wait time, it saves power during start up and as long as your computer is on.
Tip for a New Battery
A new laptop battery needs to be conditioned to get the most out of it. You can condition your battery when it's new by charging it completely, and then letting it run dry. When you recharge it, charge to the full 100%. This sets the battery to remember how much charge it can hold. After doing this, you won't ever need to discharge the battery entirely again.
Conclusion
Hopefully these tips will be new to you, and will help you in your daily rounds. Following them will make sure that next time you stop at a cafe to get some work done, you won't need to cut your outing short for lack of battery. Happy surfing.
Both Ada Denis & Richard Neesal are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.