Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.Hopefully it would be a little help for you!
1. Defrag regularly - The faster your hard drive does its work - less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.
2. Dim your screen - Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance. Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.
3. Cut down on programs running in the background. Itunes, Desktop Search, etc. All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.
4. Cut down external devices - USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use. It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.
5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.
6. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used. Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones.
7. Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
8. Take care of your battery - Exercise the Battery. Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects)
9. Hibernate not standby - Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.
10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com.
11. Set up and optimize your power options - Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).
12. Don’t multitask - Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery. Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3’s, set your mind to one thing only. If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!
13. Go easy on the PC demands - The more you demand from your PC. Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD. If you’ve got a single battery charge - pick your priorities wisely.
14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop - Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries. Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix.
15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ - Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.
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How to Extend Your Laptop's Battery Life
How to Sync Outlook between multiple computers
1. Step 1 First, lets set up a free dropbox account. Sign up at Here
2. Step 2 Install the software
on the Primary computer (perhaps your desktop), the computer whose outlook you'd like to sync to your secondary computer (perhaps your laptop).
To install, click on the install link from within your dropbox page.
3. Step 3 Once you have the software installed, we will move the Outlook Personal Folder File to our dropbox directory created in the prior step.
If you are unsure of the name and location of your Personal Folder File (PST), go to control panel, mail, file locations and note the location for the default personal folders.
Insure that Outlook is closed, then cut and paste the file to the dropbox directory.
4. Step 4 In control panel, mail, file locations, change the location to your dropbox folder that you copied the PST to in the prior step.
5. Step 5 Launch Outlook to insure that Outlook has connected to the new location of your PST.
6. Step 6 Close out of Outlook for the file to sync to your dropbox.
7. Step 7 On the secondary computer, lets say your laptop, go to your dropbox account with your internet browser and select install to Install the software.
8. Step 8 Now that you have the software installed on both computers, on the secondary computer go to Control panel, mail, file locations and change the location of the default personal folders to the file in your dropbox.
Note, depending on the size of your personal folders file, you may need to wait additional time for the file to sync from the primary computer.
9. Step 9 Once the file is synced, insure outlook is closed on the primary computer and launch outlook on the secondary computer.
You should now see the data from the primary computer
10. Step 10 You can now make edits to your secondary which will sync upon exiting outlook. Be sure to have outlook open on only one machine at a time to support this syncing process
11. Step 11 In addition to your outlook data, you can place additional files on either computer to sync to the other computer and a safe offsite location (on dropboxes servers.)
Enjoy
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