When you travel and there’s no power
outlet nearby, or when your seasoned
laptop has an annoyingly short life without
charging
– I’m sure many of you have been
in a similar situation. When every minute
counts for the battery life, you have to help
your laptop do less in order to save power.
Find out how to extend battery life on your
laptop with these 8 simple tips.
Keep fewer programs and processes
running
Try to do as little multitasking as possible.
That is, close the programs that you aren’t
using right now. Some applications might be
running in the background, draining your
battery.
A little more advanced tip is to have a look
at the Task Manager on Windows or
Activity Monitor on Mac. You’ll see a full
list of programs and processes currently
running on the machine and can stop those
you don’t need. For example, cloud storage
sync or software updaters. I wouldn’t
recommend to do it, though, unless you’re
confident that you won’t kill some critically
important process.
Limit usage of heavy applications
If you can’t charge your laptop anytime
soon, I’m afraid that movie will have to wait
… Video players, games and some music
streaming programs are rather energy-
hungry.
By the way, if you’re on Mac, you can go to
the Energy tab in the Activity Monitor and
check which apps use the most power (“Avg
Energy Impact” column). Battery use
overview is also one of the new features on
Windows 10: go to Battery Saver within
System settings and click Battery use to
see stats for the programs on your laptop.
Use the Opera browser with battery
saver on
We know how annoying it is when your
laptop battery dies at the worst possible
moment. To tackle this problem, we’ve
added a battery saver into the Opera
browser. When your laptop is unplugged,
you’ll be prompted to turn on this feature.
Opera will then cut down the activity in
background tabs, pause the plug-ins you’re
not using, stop the browser theme
animations, etc. If you use it along with
Opera’s ad blocker, you can extend your
battery’s life by almost 50%.
Disconnect external devices
Stay power-greedy: don’t share your
laptop’s energy with external devices. So,
for example, if you were using a mouse,
you’ll have to go with the built-in touchpad
for the time being.
Turn down the screen brightness
Your laptop’s display is one of the main
power consumers. To win a few extra
minutes for the battery, reduce the screen
brightness.
Adjust the system energy settings
Your operating system itself can give you
some hints on how to extend battery life.
Go to Power Options on Windows or
Energy Saver on Mac to adjust the power
settings when your laptop is unplugged. For
example, you can choose how soon to dim
or turn off the screen when you’re not
active on the laptop.
Turn off bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Even if you’re not using them right now,
these functions consume energy to stay on.
For example, when you’re on the plane,
disable Wi-Fi to prevent your laptop from
searching for a network.
Long live laptop battery! Do you have some
more tips on how to extend battery life?
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