5 ways to make your laptop battery last longer

With the latest laptops, working on the move has never been easier, but laptops are still slaves to the National Grid.
While laptop battery life is a chief cause of mobile moans, it's possible to get significant improvements by good practice and a few software tweaks. To help you get a longer laptop battery life, here are 5 easy ways to improve it. 

1. Dim your screen
The screen is one of the most power-hungry parts of the laptop. It takes serious amounts of battery power to keep your display looking clear and bright. Saving this power is simply a question of turning the brightness down. The screen brightness button is usually located as a second function of one of the F keys, and is represented by a little sun symbol with up and down icons. To use it, just hold down the correct function key and then choose up or down.


2 Turn off peripherals
Using USB peripherals can put a big drain on your system, because your motherboard has to power them, so unplugging everything saves juice. USB sticks, mice and webcams are common offenders, so copy all your information across and eject your devices as soon as possible, and put up with laptop track pads over your USB mouse. Many laptops have function buttons to turn off the built-in webcam, which drains the battery if given the chance. And switch your speakers to mute if you've no need for sound - your laptop beeping every time it gets an email or boots Windows can be a drain.

3. Battery care
Lithium-Ion batteries don't need a complete discharge (contrary to popular belief) but also you should use a battery once you've charged it. If you have a spare you keep topped up, use that instead of your main regularly. If you have an older non-Lithium-Ion battery, you'll need to regularly discharge it.


4. Don't install apps from disc on the move
Try to reduce the time you use optical drives to a minimum; they can be pretty power hungry and installing apps from CD or DVD can have an instant effect on your battery life indicator.

5. Disable features
Windows has some handy built-in features, but many put demands on your system that are unnecessary when working on the move. Take the simple measure of turning off Windows Aero when you're on the move to make your laptop more efficient.