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7 ways to make your laptop battery last longer

With the latest portable PCs, working on the move has never been easier, but laptops are still slaves to the National Grid.

You can do practically anything on a modern laptop, but their advanced features drain battery life to the extent that you can only get a couple of hours out of your laptop before it turns up its toes.

While battery life is a chief cause of mobile moans, it's possible to get significant improvements by simple good practice and a few software tweaks. To help you get the most from your laptop battery, here are seven easy ways to make it last longer.

1. Dim your screen

   The screen is one of the most power-hungry parts of the laptop. It takes serious amounts of battery power to keep your display looking clear and bright. Saving this power is simply a question of turning the brightness down. The screen brightness button is usually located as a second function of one of the F keys, and is represented by a little sun symbol with up and down icons. To use it, just hold down the correct function key and then choose up or down.

2. Change power settings

   Windows Vista comes with some great power features, which enable you to eke out the best performance when you're plugged into the mains, and optimise battery life when on the move. Type power options into the Start Search box and choose Power saver from the list. The Windows Mobility Center has more methods for saving battery life. These include settings for powering off the monitor and kicking into sleep mode more quickly.

3. Switch off Wi-Fi

   One of the biggest battery sappers is the wireless networking capabilities built into most laptops. Wi-Fi drains the battery by constantly drawing power from the battery and, when not connected, looking for networks. When you're using your laptop away from the grid, the likelihood is you're away from wireless networks, so you can turn this device off. Many laptops have a function button that enables you to turn off the wireless adaptor manually to save yourself the unnecessary waste, but older laptops often don't have this. If this is the case, just go to the Control Panel, access the Network Connections menu and disable your wireless connection manually.

4. Turn off peripherals

   Using USB peripherals can put a big drain on your system, because your motherboard has to power them, so unplugging everything saves juice. USB sticks, mice and webcams are common offenders, so copy all your information across and eject your devices as soon as possible, and put up with laptop track pads over your USB mouse. Many laptops have function buttons to turn off the built-in webcam, which drains the battery if given the chance.

5. Eject your disc drives

   Having a disc spinning in the drive is a huge drain on resources, and many programs constantly do this. Simply eject your discs before you switch to battery power to gain vital extra minutes from your working day.

6. Invest in some hardware

   Good practice can go some way to extending your battery life, but if you need to use your laptop throughout your working day, you're going to need some help. Most laptops come with a six-cell battery, but many manufacturers offer eight- or even 12-cell optional upgrades, which can double your power. The alternative to expensive laptop batteries are products such as the Philips Portable Power Pack, which gives you valuable extra hours for all your devices. The Philips is a compact battery unit that has adaptors for most laptops and mobile phones, which is portable enough to be placed in a bag and has enough capacity to double the length of your charge.

7. Disable features

   Windows Vista has some handy built-in features, but many put demands on your system that are unnecessary when working on the move. Take the simple measure of turning off Windows Aero and the Windows Sidebar when you're on the move to make your laptop more efficient.

Battery-saving tips for laptops and netbooks

Laptop batteries are a cruel tool to put your faith in. They're heavy, expensive, and will, by nature, run out and become less effective over time. Then again, they're how you get work done away from the wall socket, and they can be made, if not perfect, at least better performing.

If you haven't already, get to know Windows and Mac OS X's built-in power management utilities, which are easy to locate by typing "Power" into your Start menu or Spotlight search box, respectively. In both systems, you can customize power schemes for best performance (cranking on Photoshop), balanced (web browsing for a good while), or best battery life (20 percent battery and you must grab your boss' email). You should also set up your own custom power scheme with your preferred screen brightness, screen and hard drive time-outs, and other criteria--you might just be more frugal than you know.

Once you've set up those schemes, you'll want to make them accessible, beyond having to right-click on the power icon on the taskbar and head back into your power management scheme. Create a shortcut on your Windows desktop, and in its Properties, have the shortcut point to powercfg /setactive "Name of your power plan", substituting whatever you named your power plan inside the quotes. With that shortcut set up, you can keep it on your desktop, pin it to your Start menu, or assign a keyboard shortcut to switch it on--maybe Ctrl+Alt+B for your "Battery Saver"?

In Windows 7, you can get a more detailed report on what you could be doing better to save energy. Hit the Start menu, type in cmd, and right-click on the Command Prompt option that appears. Select "Run as Administrator," and at the prompt that appears, type in powercfg-energy. Windows will look at your computer running for about 60 seconds, then generate a report on what's using energy and how. Type in energy-report.html, and Internet Explorer will open up with a full report, detailing how your processor scales (or doesn't), how your hard drive and fans operate, and all the way down to when USB devices suspend themselves.

On both Windows and Mac laptops, the biggest energy hog, hands down, is the screen. If you know you're going to be writing or coding for some time, invert your screen colors ( Alt+Left Shift+Print Screen on Windows, Ctrl+Option+Cmd+8 on a Mac) and knock your screen brightness as low as you can, while still being able to read your text. Hit the same keyboard shortcut to kick your screen back into normal, not-scary-Tron-like mode.

Resource: How to service laptop batteries

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