It's been now several years with my old trusted laptop and very rarely it has let me down, other than the case where I had to change the motherboard, but it's lasted me a good five years and I've used it roughly and it has been on numerous trips with me to many places around India.

 Today, I’ll be showing you ways and methods to recuperate those and maximize your battery life. Some of the steps may require you go into the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) of your laptop / notebook / netbook, and others would be simple software tweaks.

 Every laptop / notebook / netbook user wants a longer battery life, but only a few know how to get it without buying a new laptop / notebook / netbook. Even though manufacturers have made great developments and improvements over the past years in increasing the efficiency of their products, even the most efficient batteries aren't lasting long enough for today's users.

 You would not have realized this, but your laptop / notebook / netbook even though it is brand new is loaded with integrated peripherals and bloatware (read manufacturer customization's and branded software) that you won’t use and consumes more resources than needed and reduces your laptops / notebooks / netbooks battery life.

 Before we go into the nitty-gritty of things, firstly you should do a full review as to why batteries die in the first place. From the basic components like the CPU to the track-pad/mouse-pad, each and every component of the laptop / notebook / netbook consumes power. The amount of power consumed varies from one component to another component and also fluctuates based on factors and conditions such as core/system temperature and processor/system workload.

 The higher the number of components / peripherals attached to your laptop / notebook / netbook and the more amount of work you do with it, the quicker the battery will drain. Every background program, driver, or service that loads, and every electronic circuitry that is used uses a teeny-weeny bit of battery power. Thus, reducing the number of attached or active peripherals and minimizing the load placed on the laptop / notebook / netbook will increase the batteries life.

Most of the manufacturers or vendors customize their laptop's / notebook's / netbook's to their liking and they are not easy to hunt down and remove or eliminate. So you, as the owner, have to make an effort to minimize this resource consumption and maximize the battery life.

Some of the immediate things you can do with a new purchase or even on older laptop's / notebook's / netbook's is by:

  1. Keeping your laptop's / notebook's / netbook's cool
  2. Dimming its display
  3. Enable system hibernation

In this how-to I’ll be focusing on things that will illustrate the benefits of modifications and tweaks

There are a number of hardware and software tips, tricks, and tweaks and to increase your laptop's battery life. However, some of these tips, tricks, and tweaks may cause your laptop's / notebook's / netbook's to function under par or to even cease to function. So, it is, therefore, imperative that you should take this advice with a pinch of salt and be very careful. Even though I have tested these tips, tricks, and tweaks on my own laptop, I will not and cannot guarantee / warranty that they will, would, could, or should work with your hardware.

Therefore, with this thought in mind, in no event shall I be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business/personal profits, business/personal interruption, loss of business/personal information, or other pecuniary loss) arising out of the use of or inability to use the advice, even if you have been advised of the possibility of such damages. You also agree that I will not and cannot be held liable for any deleterious and/or injurious changes that might occur as a result of you following the tips, tricks, or tweaks mentioned in this guide.
ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE YOU CHANGE THINGS IN YOUR SYSTEM AND YOU KNOW IT MAY BECOME WORSE OR BAD.

 Every electronic component (such as diodes, transistors, integrated circuits, optoelectronic devices, valves, discharge devices, resistors, capacitors, magnetic (inductive) devices, networks, transducers, sensors, detectors, antennas, assemblies, modules, prototyping aids), be it active, passive, or electromechanical use power when they are used. When they are not used in any function, they contain static power which is just static energy.

 Disabling and/or disconnecting unused and unwanted peripherals will improve battery life immensely. Software-wise disabling, uninstalling, or removing unnecessary applications and/or services will greatly help conserve power consumption. In addition to that, updating drivers (it would be video drivers most of the time) helps by letting the system optimize or transfer some processes, such as video encoding/decoding, games, playback from the CPU to a relatively power-efficient and dedicated graphics processor.



Image Credit: TechGYD

[ABOUT: Devesh Prabhu is an avid blogger and has been blogging posts and rants on many subjects through his various blogs. He has been associated with the blogosphere for the past 8/9 years and inadvertently left the blogging scene albeit to concentrate on his personal life, but his desire to be among his readers brought him back.]

[NOTE: The article "[How-To] Maximize Your Laptops/Notebooks/Netbooks Battery and Performance" first appeared on the Komputer Knowledge Blog.

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