How to make optimum utilization of battery power of laptop

[murali1639]

even after fully charging the new battery , it shows only 1 hr and 50 minutes remaining. The power of battery should last at least for three hours. what are the tips to use the battery power for long hours? like for atleast three hours.

murali1639@rediffmail.com

 

[rdc85]

First don't post email address...

To save battery u could turn down brightness if the room is well lighted...

if u using power from adapter it recommended to remove the battery it will prolog the battery lifetime.

try make sure the lappy is well ventilated by tilt it couple degrees using eraser or something. heat is bad for battery, heat also lower the performance... (or buy cooling pad)

 

[2danny9]

Crap laptop battery I guess. Is it a 3 cell battery? Don't expect with these cheap batteries you'll get 3 or 4 hours run on these things. Truth is you'll be looking at about 1:30 or 2 hours at the most, any more and you are a lucky individual.

What is the laptop model and battery if you can find it? Was it a cheap machine? If so, do expect battery life to be poor.

Other than that, do as what rdc85 said, and also look for power management guides.

Download power management software, in my opinion Windows power management software is not at all good, but the Asus Power4Gear in my opinion is great! I get an extra hour or two on top of my 4/5/6 hour battery life ;D!

Don;t post your email address too.

Chao,

Dan

 

[manofchalk]

If your moving around and don't expect to access any Wireless networks, turn off your Wifi, will save a decent bit of power.
Lower your brightness.
Swap your HDD to an SSD, uses less power but a ton more expensive for the capacity.

Dedicate a weekend you wont be using it too power cycling it. Drain the battery completely, plug it in to charge and leave it like that until its 100% and then leave it there for an hour. Drain completely, charge back up and leave there. Rinse and repeat a few more times.
This will restore your battery life to an extent, I found a laptop that barely lasted day would last a day and a half after power cycling it.

 

[morne]

1.Change windows power options
control panel -> Power options
Make the screen dim if not used and switch of after +- 5 min
Make HDD switch off after few min not used
Adjust brightness to lower setting
make pc sleep after +- 10 min of not being used
change the system cooling policy to passive on battery mode
2. change to ssd, i upgraded mine went from 2 hour life to 4.5 hours
3. deactivate any devices not being used, Bluetooth, wifi, 3g,
4. turn the sound down, wont make big difference but will save some power
5. close any unused programs or services, the more you run the more you drain life

that's about all i can think of at this moment

 

[rdc85]

......Dedicate a weekend you wont be using it too power cycling it......

+1 wow nice info there. will try that right away...

 

[Brett928S2]

If your moving around and don't expect to access any Wireless networks, turn off your Wifi, will save a decent bit of power.
Lower your brightness.
Swap your HDD to an SSD, uses less power but a ton more expensive for the capacity.

Dedicate a weekend you wont be using it too power cycling it. Drain the battery completely, plug it in to charge and leave it like that until its 100% and then leave it there for an hour. Drain completely, charge back up and leave there. Rinse and repeat a few more times.
This will restore your battery life to an extent, I found a laptop that barely lasted day would last a day and a half after power cycling it.

Hi

Thats TERRIBLE ADVICE

That USED to apply to lappy batteries when they were Nicads... (with memory effect)

Nowadays they are Lithium-Ion batteries and what you suggested (power cycling) will KILL IT rapidly...

It will hugely shorten its life...

All it will do if you do it once or twice MAXIMUM is to help it recalibrate...


All the best Brett

 

[barkdoll]

I went in another direction to solve this problem. Instead of focusing on power conservation I got a very high powered 6 cell battery so as to keep the weight
down. I bring this up because most don't know that new options in this area exist. So here is some food for though as they say.

I bough a laptop battery that uses the newer Panasonic NNP cells that are design to last a very long time and store more much more power than standard laptop batteries. I got a 6 cell HP MU06 Battery 5800mAh/63Wh battery with these cells. It powers my HP laptop about %30 longer per charge and will last for about 1000 charging cycles (about 3 years for me).

For reference the specs for the battery can be found at SafeBatteries

 

[rdc85]

Hi

Thats TERRIBLE ADVICE

That USED to apply to lappy batteries when they were Nicads... (with memory effect)

Nowadays they are Lithium-Ion batteries and what you suggested (power cycling) will KILL IT rapidly...

It will hugely shorten its life...

All it will do if you do it once or twice MAXIMUM is to help it recalibrate...


All the best Brett

Now, I'm confused....

so Lit-ion not advised to do power cycling, hmm need more research....

Anyways. Some laptops maker sold bigger capacity batteries (10 cells) try search one if u can find it...

 

[barkdoll]

Some will recommend to run the battery down every 30 charges so windows reports the correct remaining percentage of power left in the battery. They do this because have some report with their laptop running out of power when the systems still reports say %20 power remaining... so this fixes that by forcing the battery to calibrate and account for lost capacity you don't have any more.

BTW most of these problems go away when you buy a better battery. Most online discount batteries that are sold are in the $30-$50 range. These laptop batteries are only designed to last around 350 charging cycles which means about 1 year if you charge your battery close to 1 one a day. So if your laptop ran about 2 hours when the battery was new, just 6 months down the road your looking at only 1 hr of run time and 9 to 12 months probably 20 minutes.

With these kind of numbers you will need to employee every kind of trick possible so 6 months out your 4400mAh hasn't decayed down to a 2200mAh battery.

Now a good battery on the other hand starts out at 5800mAh (6 cell) and after 500 charges still retains %70!!!!!! So 1000 charging cycles in not out of the reach!

I have one of these high performance batteries for my Dell Latitude (6 Cell) and after 1 and half years of "just using it" without having to baby it I still have %80 capacity and about 3 -4 hours of run time depending on what I'm running.

It cost me 70 bucks for this battery! Those $30-$50 dollar 4400mAh batteries are actually very expensive considering how little your get!