Long-Term Laptop Battery Stretching Strategies
To help Australia laptop users maximize their laptop battery life, today BattAussie battery experts share some Long-Term Laptop Battery Stretching Strategies that will help turn your system into a lean, mean energy-efficient machine, adding to both the useful time you get out of a single charge, and extending the overall lifespan of the laptop battery.
1. Tune-Up
The next step is keep your laptop tuned up for more efficient use of power. A few simple maintenance tasks and upgrades will not only help your Dell 312-0504 Laptop Battery last longer, but they will also result in a faster system overall.
For starters, regularly defragment your hard drive to make data retrieval more efficient. An active drive uses more energy that an idle one, and defragging your hard drive reduces the amount of active drive time needed to access data. Over time, as you add and remove files from your system, data is haphazardly recorded to the hard drive, scattered in different portions of the drive. This disorderly (or fragmented) data, requires additional time and energy to access that information in the course of regular use. Defragmenting your drive is the digital equivalent of organizing your cupboards, making everything a bit tidier and easier to find. Windows 7 amd Windows 8 both have automatic tools that defragment your drive on a regular basis, but you should at least check to be sure that this is enabled and running properly.
Decluttering your drive will also make it more efficient. Practice good computer hygiene and regularly remove unwanted programs, clean out cobwebbed files, and ditch any excess bloatware that came with your system. Your cleanup should also include cleaning out the cache on your Web browser and deleting all of the old files from your downloads folder.
2. Take Care and Feeding of Laptop Batteries
It starts with taking care of the battery itself. If your system has a removable battery, take care not to damage the battery contacts—they connect the laptop to the battery, and if the contacts get dirty or damaged, it can reduce and disrupt the flow of power. You can clean the contacts off with a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol, but damaged contacts might need to be professionally repaired. This doesn’t apply to laptops that seal the battery into the chassis.
You may have heard old tips about charging your battery to only 80 percent, and not leaving it on the charger all the time, but most of that advice is outdated, and applies to older nickel metal hydride batteries but not the lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries used today. While modern laptop batteries don’t require you to be as conscientious about how and when you charge your HP 485041-003 battery, you should occasionally take the opportunity to let the battery drain completely through normal use.
Finally, keep things cool. Heat will shorten the long-term life of the battery, so take steps to provide optimal airflow and cooling. The biggest problems come from physical obstruction of the ventilation ports. Dust buildup is one problem, which you can take care of by cleaning the laptop’s vents and fan. A can of compressed air can be used to blow out some of the dust. The more frequent issue that crops up is using the laptop on a pillow or blanket, which can both obstruct the ventilation fan and retain the heat coming off of the system. This can be avoided by only using your laptop on surfaces like a table or desk, and a lapdesk will make a big difference when using a laptop in bed.
3. Upgrade Laptop Computer Components
Another option is to ditch the hard drive entirely, and upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD). Solid-state drives use flash memory instead of a spinning disk, so there are no moving parts, automatically offering more energy efficiency. It also removes the problems associated with fragmentation, which is a larger problem with hard drives. Upgrading to an SSD will both improve your battery life, and put some pep in your system, as SSDs offer faster performance and boot times than their traditional counterparts.
4. Laptop Battery Backup
The easiest way to ensure you always have enough battery power is to bring along an extra; either a spare battery or an external battery pack. For laptops with a removable battery, the simplest option is a replacement battery. These can either be ordered directly from the manufacturer, or purchased from a third-party company. Simply swap the old battery for the new once in a while when charging, and bring along the charged-up spare whenever you expect to be away from a power outlet.
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[…] To help Australia laptop users maximize their laptop battery life, today BattAussie battery experts share some Long-Term Laptop Battery Stretching Strategies that will help turn your system into a lean, mean energy-efficient machine, adding to both the useful time you get out of a single charge, and extending the overall lifespan of the laptop battery. … […]