Maximize the laptop battery life

Community
1

Guys,
What do you do to care your laptop batteries?
How do you use them to ensure better life of the cells?

I hear about different tricks people use. Some connect to AC power even if battery is fully changed. Some use the laptop battery first, and then recharge it frequently.

Also, are there any manuals that suggest on what to do exactly to ensure that a battery performs well?

What do you do?

2

Personally, I disconnect my laptop once it has fully charged. After the battery is fully drained, when I get the ‘battery low’ notification, I plug it in.

This is what I’ve been doing for the last one year or so and my laptop still has a battery life of 2 solid hours. I think this method works.

I haven’t tried any other method though :slight_smile:

3

If I’m going to leave it overnight (yes, I leave it overnight), I’ll remove the battery. If I’m going to use it with the battery attached, I’d do what Ten Writer would. Plus, to maximize the amount of time you can use your laptop on battery mode without plugging it in the outlet, I suggest that you pick a power-saver scheme on the power management settings, if your OS has it.

4

GeraldNitram, I would never thought of that, using my laptop without the battery, excellent tip. I will be doing that from now on

5

To increasing your battery timing, You should proper switch off or when you 'll be free so always the screen saver so that your screen can not be made default and charge only when it’s signal for low battery.
Thank You all.

6

Thank you for sharing the information here. It will be the great help for others too.
My laptop runs nearly one hour after got fully charged, I hope the suggestions you have told will improve the timing.

Thanks and regards.

7

New dell laptop battery come in a discharged condition and it is necessarily to be fully charged before use it. It is recommended that you fully charge and discharge your new dell laptop battery three times to allow it to reach its maximum rated capacity.

8

I’m using my ways… and now my laptop already 4 more years old and performing well. How I’m using? cool :slight_smile:
So simple, I’m not plug in unless is warning for battery low and unplugged once it’s done full.

9

use full battery backup then plug into the switch board

10

I don’t have any trick or idea of how to Maximize the laptop battery life…I just remove the AC power when my battery is fully charged and than use it again when it has low battery…

11

Don’t know how much difference it would make but try setting the screen brightness to a lower level

12

I always remove my battery after it has been fully charged and just plug in my laptop whenever I’m using it at home or in the office.

13

I’m running laptop at home with removed battery, when i need to go out I connect it and charge.

14

Mine is a Li-ion battery (I assume yours to be too), so I don’t need to completely discharge or do stuff like that, which some people do for old batteries.

I do certain things to take care of this thing:

  1. I think there’s this setting in BIOS which enables us to control whether battery is charged more or not after it’s fully charged… My battery doesn’t charge once it’s full, and the laptop starts running on AC power without charging battery once it’s a 100%. I don’t leave my laptop charged and unattended, but if I do so, I take care that it’s switched on so that the BIOS setting uses the power to keep it switched on rather than using it to charge the battery already charged.

  2. If I have to use laptop on battery, I do number of things like decreasing LCD brightness, killing extra processes and useless graphics, turning off networking, wireless, changing graphic card power scheme, giving proper ventilation to laptop while putting cooling policy at passive level, and spinning down hard disk when possible (all these are settings available in the OS you run).

I also defragment the HDD once in a while because HDD is big thing when it comes to power consumption and fragmentation means more reads, and lesser battery life while decreasing HDD life on the other side…

This pie chart shows what takes up how much power:

I also put that CPU frequency to ‘powersave’ if I am on Linux…

  1. There are these software like Laptop battery doubler which make your battery last longer if you are on Windows. I don’t know its Freeware or Opensource counterpart yet.
15

my laptop is also more than 4 years. the battery life has been shortened badly. maybe it’s time to change a new one.

16

Plugin your laptop for charge when the battery remains 15%
Use laptop power light in a low mode which saves ur battery.
use laptop rather than mouse which will again save your battery time.
Keep it in cool place :slight_smile:

17

What i heard is different story that we cannot plug charger when the moment we use battery . We need to use out of the battery then only we charges from zero to 100 %.

18

Modern day batteries allow you to charge at any point, i.e. 30% or 1% charge level. Again leaving the battery to charge overnight will not damage the battery as it is designed not to overcharge.
Everyday practices to maintain battery performances are: disable screen savers, minimise all active apppications, close inactive applications, enable sleep mode (screen & HD)

19

Battery life gets shorter the older it gets. Get a new battery if it is already old.
Keep your laptop under appropriate temperature settings, not too hot nor cold.
Don’t leave them charged overnight, perhaps you can use a timer (I do).

20

So does that mean that leaving a laptop charging overnight wont hurt the battery at all?

I’m in college and sometimes it is hard to wait until the “Please plug in” warning comes up because I might be in the middle of a class without a plug in near me. But I do usually try to wait till the battery life gets low to plug it in.