How to Increase Battery Backup Time of Laptop

Earlier I had discussed about the ways to extend life of laptop battery. Now here are few tips on how to increase the battery backup
time of Laptop in hours. Say if you have a 6 cell battery, which normally gives backup of 2.5 hours, you can stretch it by 30 minutes following these tips which can be really handy.

01. Screen Brightness – Always dim the screen while working in battery mode as the brighter screen consumes more battery. Generally the Fn key is used to dim the screen. You will get the proper way on your Laptop’s manual.

02. Use Hibernate – Sometime, we need to leave for short sessions and in such situations, most of us use the Stand by or Shut down option. But it is suggested to Hibernate your system if you are going outside for 20-30 minutes as it consumes lesser power and saves and image of your all open applications. If you are not aware about Hibernate, click here to learn XP Hibernate and Vista Hibernate.
03. Close all Unwanted Applications – Often we open 4/5 programs and left them inactive. But these are consuming physical RAM as well as pagefile and CPU in background which requires continuous power. So, never left any program open if you are not using them.
04. Avoid CD/ DVD – While working on battery try to avoid using CD/ DVD as much as possible. Actually CD/ DVD consume huge power especially while continuous uses like watching movies, listing songs or burning. If possible, try to perform these tasks while connected to direct power.
05. Turn off un-used hardware – To get more backup from your battery, close all un-used hardware like, USB drive, Bluetooth , WIFI, Infrared etc.
06. Avoid CPU intensive Tasks – Never perform any CPU intensive tasks if your laptop is running on battery. These applications are like Games, Virus Scanning, Defragmenting, CD/ DVD copy, Installation Applications etc.
07. For Centrino CPU – If your laptop comes with Intel Centrino CPU then, remember to enable the Intel Speed step technology. You can know more about it from this article which has covered it very nicely.