Prolonging Your Laptop Battery’s Lifespan

by Nancy Walker on November 8, 2009

Sometimes when you are traveling with your portable computer and there are no outlets available, you must find some creative ways to make your battery last longer than usual. Usually, laptop batteries only stay charged for no more than two hours. The reason for the quick discharge is that some items on a portable computer quietly suck your battery's juice. Without even knowing it, the applications you have on your laptop are taking the energy away from your batteries. So, the greatest choice you can make to retain as much energy as possible in your battery is to close any applications you are not currently using when you don't have electrical outlets available. Some other techniques exist that promise to also extend the duration of your laptop's battery. Here are some suggestions that you can use to make sure your battery remains charged for a longer time frame.

A few hours is usually the maximum time you can power your modern laptop by batteries. If you are careful with the way you use it, you can extend the life of your battery for a couple of years. However, near the end of its lifetime, the way it drains and stores energy declines significantly. You don't need a computer technician to help you prolong the battery life of your laptop computer; there are some easy steps that you can take by yourself.

Dimming your laptop's screen would be a very easy step you could take to prolong its battery life. This can be accomplished through fiddling with your monitor's brightness levels by using the laptop's secondary function keys. All you do is press the function key and hold "F', which has a sun and arrow icon on it. An alternate approach for modifying your laptop's brightness levels would be using the power saving settings. Laptops that have Windows Vista will have that window on other laptop settings you could allow you to use the computer at longer intervals. In addition to other power saving settings, you could use the sleep and power off settings.

Additional perpetrators that contribute to a dying battery are programs with high pixelation levels and advanced sound settings. Never use more than several of these programs at once, as all of the power you have stored will be used up more quickly than anticipated. Other sources that are responsible for draining your battery's life are the wi-fi networking devices. Even when there is no connection, your computer will keep using up its battery while looking for and finding available wireless networks. Shut your computer off if you don't need an Internet connection in the first place.

In addition, ensure that any temporary storage devices do not contain any information. For instance, your CD or DVD player could have a disc inside that the computer continues to read even if you're not using it. Remove the disc from the tray since it will drain energy when it is in there, whether you know it or not. Any other component that utilizes a USB port is also taking up energy. By removing the USB cable when the component is not in use, you will save a lot of energy normally taken up by these peripherals.

Toshiba batteries last a long time, but if your up and you need a Toshiba battery PA3509U 1BRM or PA3535U 1BRS.

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