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Laptops are an excellent tool for working or browsing on the go — That is, when they are charged up. One of the worst situations you can run into is your laptop dying in the middle of an important project or high-intensity game, and it can seem like the amount of charge a laptop battery holds is never enough. Thankfully, you can do some computer servicing at home with a few tweaks and changes to your system’s settings and to your usage habits to enhance your battery life and keep it running well as long as possible.
Reduce Your Brightness
The screen on a laptop is one of the more power-intensive components in a laptop, and can be one of the first easy enhancements to manage your computer’s battery life. Particularly on newer systems with higher pixel counts, denser LED structures, and brighter maximum brightness levels, the screen of a laptop can be an incredibly power-hungry part of the system, and lowering the brightness on it will significantly improve the laptop battery’s performance.
Lowering the brightness of the screen reduces its power consumption, as less energy is required to achieve the lower and less intense light levels. In turn, this lowered power consumption will increase the length of your battery charge.
Close Down Unused or Dormant Programs
Multitasking is an incredibly common, often expected part of utilizing the productivity enhancements a laptop can provide. As programs and apps are opened, however, they require more resources from the laptop’s components to operate. Parts like the CPU, RAM, and Hard Drive all require power to function, and as programs are opened, more power is required to operate these computer components properly.
To reduce the amount of strain these components can put on your battery, it is best to close down any currently unused or dormant programs, which will require less resources from your computer components, thereby increasing your battery life.
Enable Your System’s Low Power Mode
Many systems, not just laptops, have a “low power mode” that can enhance battery performance. In addition to lowering brightness, it also minimizes secondary service activation, prevents update checking, and lowers the performance of some computer parts by a small amount. These various changes are ways your system can reduce resource consumption and lower power usage, enabling you to enhance your battery life while low power mode is on.
Turn Off Secondary Services
Laptops and other computers have a large variety of secondary services that enable ease of use and a streamlined experience when using the system. Secondary services can include location tracking, Bluetooth, automatic updating, and a variety of other quality of life services that require small amounts of resources from your system. Each of these services is a power-sink, however, and turning them off can reduce the power consumption of your system. Although some of the more automated parts of your laptop usage may stop, it is a small price to pay for extended battery charge.
Disable Keyboard Enhancements
Many modern laptops come with a large variety of quality-of-life keyboard enhancements, such as backlighting, sound responses, and even built-in screens. Many of these enhancements aren’t crucial to the operation of a laptop, however, and can lead to unnecessary power usage from your battery. Turning off your backlighting, keystroke feedback, and keyboard sounds can be an easy and unobtrusive way to lower your power consumption and extend your battery life.
Monitor Your Charging Habits
Lithium-ion batteries, which most electronics run off of, require particular charging habits for the longest lifespan. Contrary to common belief, fully charging and discharging your battery can cause unnecessary strain on your battery, leading to lowered performance and less ability to hold a charge over time. To mitigate this degradation, it is suggested to keep your battery charge above 20% and below 80%, as this prevents excessive wear and tear on your battery, and a longer battery life in the long run.
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Make the Most of Your Multitasker
Laptops are an incredibly efficient and useful piece of tech, and there are many unique and personal enhancements you can make to tailor your laptop experience to what you need. Many of these improvements can enhance more than just your battery performance, but also your overall processing speeds and computer’s life. No matter what state your laptop may be in, there is sure to be some sort of enhancement or adjustment you can make to improve and personalize your user experience.
