One thing that most all laptop users lack: a battery that will stay charged long enough for all their uses. When your battery seems to have crapped out on you, do you buy a new machine? Absolutely not! All you really need to do is learn to manage its resources better. To learn more, read on.

Why Your Battery Dies

There are many factors that attribute to battery drainage. Every component, whether it’s the CPU or the trackpad, eats up battery power. How much power consumed depends on things such as system workload and the temperature of the laptop’s environment. The more peripherals hooked up to your laptop, and the more hours of work involved, the greater the power consumption. Battery power is also consumed by each program, driver, and service or task that runs in the background. Likewise, there may be integrated peripherals and so called “bloatware” that you don’t even need. Therefore, it is imperative that you use as few attached or active peripherals as necessary.

Still, there are defaults and burdens your laptop’s manufacturer or vender puts on the battery of your laptop that are not easy to find and alleviate. With this in mind, you must conserve battery consumption any way you can. However, you still can reclaim resources to optimize the battery life of your computer. Some of these tactics entail venturing into the notebook’s BIOS or United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) while others just require easy software adjustments.

Battery Conserving Tips

Start by making a backup and a restore point, then consult your owner’s manual. What works great for some laptop models will cause others to run poorly or cease to function. Following are ways to help slow down the use of battery consumption:
• Keep your laptop cool – Use your system indoors as much as possible. This will enable you to work with a dimmed display.
• Disable and disconnect all unnecessary components and peripherals.
• Tweak your software – Begin by disabling or uninstalling services and applications that are “resource hungry.” Update drivers, especially video drivers, as this will help optimize the system while it offloads particular processes. Such processes may be video encoding/decoding, from the CPU to the graphics processor’s dedicated hardware.

Keep in mind that all programs and services that load when Windows starts up eat up system resources. Hence, you must disable the ones you don’t want or need. To do this, you must start up the Windows System Configuration utility MSCONFIG and take the following steps:
1. Click the START button.
2. Type: MSCONFIG in the SEARCH field, then press ENTER.
3. In the next window, select the STARTUP tab to get a list of all programs that are started as Windows loads. To see all services that start up automatically, click START then type: SERVICES MSC in the SEARCH field, then press ENTER.
4. Choose all programs that you would like to disable (ie: Acrobat programs, Quick Time, Skype, etc) by unchecking the box next to them.
5. To disable a service in the management utility, double-click on it and a window will open. In the associated drop-down menu, change the startup type to manual.
6. Reboot your system.

Although it is handy to have all the programs you use regularly start up when Windows loads, some of them can be launched manually. Most of the services in the management utility’s list are crucial to your operating system’s functioning and thus, should not be deleted. All you can do then is read each one and research its function online then delete the ones you’re sure aren’t essential.

Again, you can disable unused hardware or integrated peripherals to conserve resources and extend the life of the battery. If for example, you have a cellular modem, integrated Bluetooth, or a wired Ethernet port you don’t need, turning these off will help reduce the consumption of energy and eliminating them from starting up once Windows loads.

Integrated peripherals can be disabled in the BIOS or UEFI system in Device Manager. Though it is best to use BIOS, this method is not feasible for many laptops.To determine if your laptop supports this, power it off and turn it back on. During the POST sequence of the startup (before Windows loads), press DEL or F2 and you will then enter the BIOS system. Select the Integrated Peripherals menu if it’s available and see if the hardware you wish to delete is listed there. If it is, then disable it.

Also, you can disable hardware through Windows Device Manager. Though this doesn’t power down the hardware, it prevents its driver from initializing during startup, thus conserving memory. Simply click START and type Device Manager in the SEARCH field then press ENTER. Expand its tree, find the hardware listing, right click it, and choose DISABLE from the resulting menu.

Finally, consider reducing the brightness of your notebook’s display. Dim it to the lowest level that is easily read without eye strain.

About the Author: Publishnprosper is an online writer and article publisher whom offers his readers facts and tips on how to keep your computers, networks, and portable devices safe and free of malware. Also, readers can find coupons for antivirus programs as Bitdefender or Kaspersky plus other quality programs online.

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