Poor laptop battery life?

Last week we had three customers that came to the store to service their laptops. All three were complaining that they cannot unplug their laptops off the power outlet simply because their battery was not retaining any charge. Their complaint is common among laptop users who purchased their laptops a year or two ago. The reason for this is that the typical battery life expectancy on laptops is about one to two years in old models. A little less than three years in newer machines. The variation in time depends mostly in the way people uses their laptops. The question is, how can you extend the life of your battery?

Users have a tendency to run many unnecessary programs and services at the same time on their machines. In laptops that will drain your battery performance in a short and a long run besides to slow down your computer. A tune up will tackle both issues. Another way you can safe some battery life is to avoid leaving devices, such as thumb drives, connected to the USB ports or any device that uses power from the laptop. Remove them if they are not needed nor you are planning to immediately use them. Furthermore, the power option settings are a great tool to customize your hardware performance when on battery or plug in giving you even more savings, but which of course will come by sacrificing the laptop overall performance.

Low power options

Additionally, you should hibernate instead of putting your machine to sleep if you are not planning to use the computer for a while. When your machines hibernate uses no power and allows you to save your work so can resume exactly where you left it at a later time. This is especially useful if you are not going to use our laptop for one hour or more. Moreover, overheating your laptop or using them in very hot environments is another way your battery will not last. One very common mistake is to place the laptop on the bed which causes to overheat. Not only does it shorten your battery life but also reduce the lifetime all the internal components in your laptop.

The biggest toll in the life of your battery is your screen which is responsible for about 40% of the power consumption. Adjusting the screen brightness is the single biggest tweak you can make to prolong your battery lifespan. Despite your efforts, no matter what you do, your battery will slowly lose the ability to hold charge. Lithium batteries, which are used in modern laptops and don’t have memory effects, should not be plugged in constantly if your laptop is seating in a desk.

Saving power

By doing so you will lose about 20% extra every year, so the best approach is to remove the battery and leaving the laptop to receive power only by plugging in preferably to a powered backup battery to protect it from any power surge. When using the battery, do not completely deplete the charge because it can have also a negative effect. Also always consult your manufacture’s manual.

There are another tweaks on the web that can help you to save a little more battery life, but they won’t make that much impact as if you do any of the above and especially if you avoid overcharging your battery, overheating your laptop, and lowering the screen brightness.

My question to you is: What are you doing for the life of your battery?

If you have any questions or need any computer assistance please can contact us at (305) 261-5395 email us: [email protected] Like us on Facebook