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Help Your Battery Go The Distance

Posted by JD on October 30, 2009

Laptop Battery Charger for Dell Inspiron 1000 2200 B130

$12.09

HP DV1000 DV4000 DV5000 Laptop Computer Battery charger

$8.45

LAPTOP AC Battery Charger for HP Pavilion DV2000 DV9000

$8.25

As much as laptops, notebooks and netbooks have progressed in terms of raw computing power and vivid graphic displays, there is one component that just isn’t pulling its weight in term as technological advancement-the battery. If you’re a mobile computer user, you already know this.

Let’s take a look at some tips that are easy to implement and may add up to an hour onto your average battery life.

Close programs you aren’t using. Better yet, never open them in the first place. The more programs you have running simultaneously, the harder your laptop’s components have to work. When they work hard, they use more power. Plus they eat up your system resources, slowing down your computing in general. Keep open just the applications you need and save the big power drainers until you’re plugged in again.

You would probably be surprised to know how many processes are running on your computer at any given time. Many of these processes are related to handy little items on your computer desktop that might be nice, but not worth the power drain when you want to maximize your battery. Start by removing some of the programs from the automatic start-up list.

If you are confident that you won’t stop a needed process, you can also remove some of the power hungry processes using task manager. Are you using wi-fi? If not, turn off the wireless radio on your computer. There’s no point in wasting watts just to look for a connection that’s not there or not needed. And if you’re not online or using a suspect USB stick, you can probably kill your virus protection as well. Just remember to turn it back on when you reconnect with the world.

Use a little common sense. If you are starting a business and will need to hit the ground running with your computer, then by all means, don’t sit in the airport lounge watching a movie or playing a graphics intensive game. Save that battery power for when you’ll really need it-your big presentation that lands you the next big client!