How To Pro-long Your Laptop Battery Life tips and tricks

[SofiaComp 0]

Hi there, I have a new laptop and i want to prolong my li-on battery life. I use the laptop as a Desktop computer more offten rather than mobile computer. I've decided to remove my battery which is a li-on battery. Here is how the removing works: Charge your battery on 100%, then discharge (to discharge it you must run your laptop on battery power) to about 45%-50%. Then remove the battery, after removing the battery is good to place something(paper,cotton...etc) in the placeholder of the battery on the downside of the laptop so that it remains clean. Put the laptop on A.C. power, or D.C. power whatever your charger is . The battery must be in a cool place 10C or something teoritically it can survive -10C but i've never headred of someone doing that. So you can place it in the refrigerator, as it is cool enough to slow the depletion process and increse you battery lifetime. li-on batteries react with heat. When heat is present about 30C your battery lifetime will be reduced with about 40%-50%, the more heat the less battery life. WARNING: Never remove a fully discarched battery from latop for a period over well about 1 month, because your battery will not be able to be charged again. Never leave a battery in a freezer. because i don't know what the result will be the li-on batteries are said to survive -40C but i never tried it. I hope the above posted is useful.

Edited February 14, 2009 by SofiaComp (see edit history)

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

Thank you for that post. It has to be one of the best I have seen on how to save a battery. They cost so much to replace now a days, any way you can save them and have them last is great. I know when I used to have a LT the battery was always dying faster than it should. after reading this I now know why.

[Ash-Bash 0]

I will follow this advice next time I buy a new laptop or a new battery, as my HP battery only can last for about 30minutes when new it could run for about 3-4 hours! that's when I was using Photo shop and gaming as well!

[SofiaComp 0]

hehe, Can you measure the working temperature? i think it is above 30C when you play a game like CS? Ah And when you play games you can remove the battery and place it in a 5C conditions. My laptop is not suited for games. however i am not sure for the temperatures but i guess the best temp when the battery will discharge the less is around 0C. But be sure to do that on your own risk.

Edited February 14, 2009 by SofiaComp (see edit history)

[flashy 0]

Well ill be darned - i was always told to warm up batteries (AA's im on about) to get a teeny bit more juice out of them. Like rubbing them in the hands, placing in your pockets as such.

 

My laptop battery currently has 4:38 hours left and it is at 95%.

 

Here i have some tips, on how to maximise the potential of your battery life.

Use an older Operating System like Windows XP or Windows 98/2000 - they are less resource hungry, thus consuming less power

If you are going to use windows xp or vista, make sure you have the "Windows Classic" theme in place, it uses less on your graphics card + aswell make it more performance

Dont charge until you have 5-10% life left.

DIM your screen to the minimum!

Dont have so many windows open at once

Try to aim for 30 processes if you are on windows 98/2000 - <50 on xp - and <70 on vista

Clear the garbage from your harddrive, aswell as regularly defragmenting. This also increases the life of your harddrive.

Buy bigger RAM! - Bigger RAM wont give as much stress and load as the smaller ones

Use earphones or low energy headphones rather than the speakers

Make sure you are using the "Maximum battery" option if you are using vista

Unplug unused USBs!

Ill add more to this list Edited February 14, 2009 by flashy (see edit history)

[africa 0]

Thank you for that post. It has to be one of the best I have seen on how to save a battery. They cost so much to replace now a days, any way you can save them and have them last is great. I know when I used to have a LT the battery was always dying faster than it should. after reading this I now know why.

Thanks, i also enjoyed immensely.

My brother dropped his laptop a few weeks ago and his battery just went bust!

Now i am getting my own laptop, so this is really going to help me.

The battery that i have on my laptop now lasts for two hours if i am not watching movies, etc

[princeofvegas 0]

The best way that I have prolonged my laptop battery was to switch to Linux. IN there there were so many ACPI configurations such as CPU throttling and auto dim I took a laptop that would only last at best 3 hours under the best situation in windows vista and I now get easily 7 to 8 hours on it in linux. If you are looking for battery life then linux is the way to go. YOu should check out the Ubuntu or Gentoo forums and search for laptop battery and you will see what I mean.

[iGuest 3]

Prolonging battery life in Linux(Ubuntu)How To Pro-long Your Laptop Battery Life

Modern Linux kernel includes very good support for Laptop mode. ItIs use to control the IO subsystem. When laptop mode is enabled, theLinux will try to be smart about when to do disk I/O. It gives as muchTime as possible to be in a low power state. If mode is disabled ifValue is set to zero (0). To enable mode use non zero value such as 5.

Display or print current Laptop mode

Type the following command:$ cat /proc/sys/vm/laptop_modeOutput:

0

Turn on or enable Laptop mode

Type the following command as the root user:$ sudo echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_modeOR# echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

A note about Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu has a laptop-mode-tools package, which isInstalled by default on laptops. However, laptop mode is disabled byDefault in Ubuntu Edgy (6.10), because some people have beenExperiencing hangups with it on certain laptops (mostly Thinkpads).Until now, nobody has any clue what is happening here. To reenableLaptop mode, edit /etc/default/acpi-support and setENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true.

If you want to use the latest version of laptop mode tools, you canUse the Debian packages, they are compatible enough to workOut-of-the-box on Ubuntu.

Ssenoga Paul-Uganda

-reply by Ssenoga Paul

[iGuest 3]

Why there is no "safe charge level" for option in OS-es?How To Pro-long Your Laptop Battery Life

Why there is no subprogram that could keep netbooks at "safe charge level" for about 40% dependant on how long you usually use it unplugged? with possibility to switch to "Power tank" mode with 100%of charge?

usually netbooks are not being unplagged for whole range of 8-11 hours, so if it is an hour for home trip you can keep charge level at 50%. Why not to do it?

-reply by hrayr azizbekyan

 

[Saint_Michael 3]

Most the tips mention hear are pretty good in extending your battery life but I think the most important one that you should rely on is either pull your battery out when your plug into your AC adaptor or have the adaptor unpluged until your battery is near dead. As for having your battery lasting longer while the computer is running is a different story, since age gradually reduces the battery life and of course it also depends what your doing on that computer as well that determines battery life.So less stuff running on your computer will help, but if you got a lot of intensive stuff running like play games or have a lot programs running then your batter will drop faster. So its just a matter of balancing the workload to make the batter last longer.

[inea 0]

The disadvantage of storing the battery in the frisk is that it seems important to keep the battery dry. And that can be a problem in the frisk. With normal temperatures it doesn't seem to be a problem to keep the battery outside the frisk. It is not sure that the advice to store the battery when it is 50% full is a usefull advice. It seems handy to store the battery when it is full loaded. The remark that it won't load anymore when saved while loaded for 50% is not supported by my experience.

[Soviet Rathe 1]

ahhh, very good post OP, yes, cooler temperatures will increase your batteries lifespan and make it last longer before having to recharge.. you may want to buy a cooling pad for $20, I always use one. my laptop never gets hot (CPU temp never gets above 50c) but I like to use a cooling pad to keep my laptop & battery in good health. if you're running windows 7 there's a tab in battery management that shows you how well your battery is preforming. I'm running windows 7 with 4 gigs of ram, I never try to 'reduce resources' I run the areo theme and don't bother to try and close unneeded processes and I usually get about 4 hours out of my battery if my screen is dimmed.