Laptop Battery Life

[Antares]

So I was looking around for stratagies on how to make the most of your laptop battery. When I first got my laptop I think the battery lasted for like 3hours or so. I am not sure how long it lasts now but I want to maxamize my battery so it last longer and I have not issues with it.

Does anyone know any techniques for this?
Like keeping it plugged in, going through cycles often? Etc.

Help is appreciated :yummy:

[Skhorpion]

Turn the backlight as low as you can, don't let it discharge a lot.

[Mzor203]

If it has a wireless adapter, turning the adapter off saves power. Now, most of the time you wouldn't want to do this, but if you were working on a project, say, that didn't require you be online, you could turn it off.

Also, in the control panel there should be power options. You should set it so that if the computer sits idle for a couple of minutes it goes into sleep mode. This will save some power if you leave it sitting there for a while and don't necessarily want to turn it completely off.

[Aηdy]

Turn your LCD backlight down as low as you can manage with. Let your screen turn off after a minute or two. Set your hard drive to power off after 5-10 minutes. Set minimum processor state to 5%. Unplug anything such as USB sticks, ipods etc as they drain power. Turn off any network adapters that you're not using also.

[Antares]

Ok, so far I have almost all of those things done.

So one more question.

Is it better to be plugged in all the time or using the battery all the time

[iJack]

Using the battery, letting it cycle through.

[Aηdy]

If the battery is fully charged then I always take it out. It does it good to run it flat then recharge once or twice a week.