5) Use your laptop’s built-in battery saving mode
Today, most laptop manufacturers include battery saving mode, low power mode, or a similar mode where power efficiency is maxed out.
In these modes, your laptop uses a minimum amount of battery life, shuts down non-essential processes, and dims the screen to ensure you’re stretching battery life as far as it can go.
Low battery mode isn’t always ideal. If you’re working in a bright environment, then low battery mode will make it impossible to see what you’re working on.
However, if you absolutely need to stretch your battery’s life just a little bit longer, then right-click on the battery icon in your system tray (the bottom right corner of your screen) and adjust your battery settings to “Eco” or “Battery Saver” mode.
4) Disable devices, components, and ports that you don’t use
Your laptop is probably filled with ports and component drivers that you’ll never use.
It may be constantly scanning for Bluetooth signals, for example, or waiting for an Ethernet connection through the LAN adapter.
Some laptop users will never use any of these adapters or ports, in which case you can safely disable the ports without affecting performance. To do that, go to:
Control Panel > Device Manager
In Device Manager, you’ll see individual components separated into different categories. Some suggested devices you can disable include:
-Graphics Card (in the Display Adapters category)
-Optical Drive (in the DVD/CD-ROM Drives category)
-Ethernet and Wi-Fi Adapters (in the Network Adapters category)
-Bluetooth and Bluetooth device drivers
-USB ports that you don’t use
Obviously, you shouldn’t disable your Ethernet port if you plan on connecting a wired internet connection to your laptop, and you shouldn’t disable the graphics card if you plan on using grahpics-intensive applications – like PC games.
3) Adjust screen settings
In most cases, the screen is your biggest source of power loss. Your laptop’s screen is constantly draining the battery when it’s on. When you’re watching 1080p video or playing a full HD PC game, that battery is drained at an alarming rate.
To maximize battery usage, adjust screen settings to reflect your usage patterns. Do you regularly step away from your laptop for a few minutes? If so, then set the screen to turn off after 3 minutes of inactivity.
On some laptops, there’s a “dim” and “off” setting for your display. You can dim your laptop after 30 seconds of inactivity and then completely turn off the screen after a few minutes of inactivity.
To adjust these settings, right-click on your desktop, click Personalize, then click ‘Screen Saver’. To further customize your display settings, click on ‘Display’ on the left-hand side of that menu.
2) Eliminate unnecessary startup processes
Some PC users never adjust which programs launch upon Startup. I don’t know why – changing your startup list of programs will boost loading times while also improving battery life and overall performance.
To change boot order on your Windows laptop, tap the Start button and type in msconfig. Then, click the ‘Startup’ tab and uncheck the boxes beside any unnecessary programs.
None of the programs listed here are absolutely essential to your computer’s startup process (you can’t easily disable those processes). You’re safe to disable whichever programs you want to disable from this list.
Uncheck the boxes beside programs you rarely use or programs you don’t need upon startup.
1) Maintain your laptop and your battery
Your laptop requires some important physical maintenance.
That maintenance includes:
-Clearing dust out of the laptop’s fans and ports using a canister of compressed air. Excessive dust buildup will create heat, and more heat requires more cooling power. When your fans have to work extra hard to maintain a cool temperature, it reduces battery life.
-Removing the laptop battery and cleaning the ports with a cotton swab or soft cloth
-Occasionally let the battery drain completely, then charge it to 100%.
Modern laptop batteries don’t require the same drainage/recharge cycle as lithium ion batteries from a few years ago, but it still helps to drain the battery to 0% from time to time.
