How to enhance your notebook battery life

How to enhance your notebook battery life

1. New battery pack must be fully charged before use. Always charge your new battery fully before use.
   
2. Dim screen/LCD brightness: Choose an environment with adequate lighting—less brightness means you'll drain less power from your battery.
   
3. Run your applications wisely: To get the most from your laptop, even when multitasking on the go, run resource intensive applications just when actively using them. Then make sure to close the applications you aren’t using.
   
4. Close unused applications: Programs will still use power while sitting idle.
5. Have the right RAM for your needs: With appropriate RAM, instructions run off memory instead of disk. Less power is needed to refresh the RAM than to spin the hard drive.
   
6. Clean your battery: Rub the battery's metal contacts with rubbing alcohol every two months. Allow to dry before re-inserting.
   
7. Remove extra accessories: Unplug items like PC cards, USB and FireWire devices that are not being used.
   
8. Use built-in power management devices: Enable this feature and set your system to "Battery Optimized" mode or "Max Battery" mode. Put your computer to sleep earlier and turn off the screen backlight sooner.
   
9. If not using wireless LAN to connect to the Internet, turn it off: Wireless LAN access uses power even when it is not in use. Transmitting and receiving data drains the battery.
   
10. Defragment your hard drive regularly: The built-in defrag utility included with Windows* will take your file fragments and put them closer together on your hard drive, which will decrease hard drive access times and save battery life.

Good one.

You can also improve battery life by reducing the CPU's speed and reducing screen brightness.

hi,
thanks for the information.

In general, rechargeable batteries store electrical energy through chemical reaction -- therefore, capacity will change by temperature, unused storage period, load condition, and number of cycles used.

The following instructions provides tips on how to obtain the best battery condition to extend battery rundown time:

• Once you have started charging the battery pack, do not use it until it is fully charged.
  
  
• If your battery is brand new and you are charging it for the first time, your battery may not be charged to full capacity due to characteristics of chemicals in the cell. To obtain maximum performance, all chemical materials in the battery must be fully activated. In order to achieve this:
  
  
• Cycle the battery (fully charge, then fully discharge) three times.
  
  
• Cycling the battery three times is also recommended if you have stored the battery for a few months.
  
  
• Do not charge the battery pack until all of its power is used. Partial charge or discharge causes a lack of uniformity of activated chemicals in the cell, and may cause performance degradation.
  
  
• It is recommended that you deep-discharge your Ni-MH* battery every few months for optimum performance. Deep-discharge occurs when your ThinkPad system is used on battery power until the charge is at 0% (the system will automatically go into hibernation). At this point, attach the AC adapter and charge to 100%.

Do not deep-discharge Lithium Ion batteries. Batteries can degrade when they are left unused for long periods of time. For some rechargeable batteries (particularly Lithium Ion batteries), leaving a battery unused in a discharged state could increase the risk of a battery short circuit, which could shorten the life of the battery and can also pose a safety hazard. Do not let rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries completely discharge or store these batteries in a discharged state.