Laptops: how to work longer on battery power

It is often that we found ourselves working on the go with laptops, maybe at work or on the train, and that we don't have a power source at disposal. Maybe we need to make the last touches to a project before final printing, and we need the computer to work for as long as we can and hopefully fast enough so that we can finish on time. In these cases, here are some tips to make your battery last longer.

First it is imperative that you close all programs you are not using at the time. They might be programs that launch automatically when Windows starts, or software that we have chosen must start whenever we are working on our computer, like Skype. To see what processes are running at any point in time, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. Also, close all windows and open documents as soon as you finish working on them in order to free the RAM memory.

Change the display options and screen resolution to lower values and use the mouse that comes incorporated on the keyboard rather than a USB one, since all external devices will eat up your battery life. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, as well as the speakers on your pc. Take into consideration that the more applications you use simultaneously, the less your battery will last, so if you have to work on an Excel spreadsheet, change an image in Photoshop and copy the data on a Powerpoint presentation, do one thing at a time in order to help the computer run more smoothly.

Windows gives you the option of prioritizing in which way you want to use the resources on your computer. The interface does in fact spend a lot of energy in making everything look pretty, but that does not seem the most important thing in the world when you are running out of battery. When it is time to work under pressure, we can go do the System icon in our Control Panel and change the Performance Options settings on the Advanced tab. Check Adjust for best performance.

If your lifestyle requires you to run on battery quite often, try substituting your CDs and DVDs for an external hard disk, since it consumes much less battery than CDs and DVDs do when operating on a computer.

These little tweaks should help you win several minutes of battery life, but remember to save every once in a while all your data before it runs out completely.