How to Improve Laptop Battery Life

Battery life is one of the most important aspects people look at when buying laptop computers. Laptops with longer battery life generally cost more money than laptops with shorter battery life. However, there are a few things you can do to extend the battery life of your laptop. Here's how to improve laptop battery life.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A laptop computer

1. 
   Lower the brightness on your laptop to improve battery life

   Perhaps the biggest power drain on a laptop's battery is the screen. The brighter a screen is, the shorter the battery life will be. So when you use a laptop on battery power, make sure you dim the backlight of the laptop screen to drastically improve laptop battery life. Try to keep the brightness at about half, or lower if you can see the screen well enough.

2. Try not to use extra features on your laptop that you are not using. For example, if you are not using the internet on your laptop, make sure you turn on your wi-fi radios to increase laptop battery life.

3. 

   Close any extra running programs that you are not using. The more programs you have running in the background, the more RAM and CPU processing power you are using - thus draining more power from the laptop battery. To close extra programs, enter the Task Manager (for Windows only) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and close any extra programs that you are not using. This will help improve laptop battery life.

4. 
   Set the battery settings to power saver to improve laptop battery life

   Most laptops have a "Power-Saver" setting. This essentially lowers your CPU's clock speed, effectively making your laptop slower, but improves laptop battery life. In Windows, access battery and power settings from the control panel.