Boost your laptop's battery - part one

Want to squeeze extra life out of your laptop’s battery? We reveal 10 fantastic ways to help it last longer.

1 Use Windows’ power options properly
Don’t always assume your laptop arrives already set up to use its battery in the best possible way. Instead, click the Start button, open the Control Panel and then double click the Power Options icon. From this dialogue box you can select from Windows’ ready-made power schemes or tweak the existing ones to create your own.

2 Don’t leave stuff plugged in
Everything that’s plugged into your laptop – a digital camera, USB memory stick, one of the new low-powered USB scanners, a PC Card – draws power from the battery. Make sure you unplug things you’re not using.

3 Charge, discharge, then charge
Despite batteries becoming cleverer at conserving power, some people still recommend that when you get a new laptop you charge it to 100 per cent, then discharge it completely and then charge it fully again before you use it. This lets the battery work to its fullest capacity.

4 Reduce your laptop’s brightness
LCDs eat batteries for breakfast and just dropping the brightness a smidgen will make a difference. You can usually do it directly from the keyboard by holding down the Fn (Function) key in combination with Brightness key (it usually has a small blue sun on it and a plus or minus sign, but refer to your notebook’s manual if you can’t find it).

5 Use blank screen savers
Use a screen saver to ‘blank’ the LCD after a couple of minutes. Right click on the Desktop and choose Properties. In the Display Properties box that pops up click the Screen Saver tab, select Blank from the drop down list and set the Wait time to two minutes. Then click OK

For tips 6 to 10 click here.