By Rich Robinson for Windows Guides

14 Ways to Extend Laptop Battery Life

If you use your laptop or tablet on battery power, you’ll know how annoying it is to lose battery power at the “worst time”. While I can’t guarantee your PC will lose power at a more convenient time, I can offer 14 ways to improve your battery life. Learn, in this guide, how to save power when running on batteries.

Note: This guide is written for Windows 7 but most tips apply for Windows Vista

Save Battery Power

Here are some ways to save your battery’s power. You don’t need to apply all these tips but every little helps.

1. Turn Down Screen Brightness
To turn down screen brightness, click the battery icon in the system tray and click Adjust screen brightness.

Slide the brightness slider to the left until you can comfortably see the screen and it’s dimmest setting.

2. Cut Down on Background Applications
Many background applications don’t need to run and only increase CPU cycles and, in turn, the demand on your battery. Here’s a couple of things you can do to cut down on background applications:

2a. Disable Windows Sidebar Gadgets
If you don’t use the sidebar, you probably have it disabled already (right click the Windows Sidebar icon in the system tray and click Exit.)

If you use the Windows Sidebar, do you really need all your gadgets running when you’re on battery power? To disable Windows Sidebar gadgets:

Click the Start button and click Control Panel. Type gadget in the top-right search box, and click View list of running gadgets.

Next to the running gadgets, click remove.

2b. Diable Startup applications
To disable uneccessary startup applications, follow this guide.

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