Mobile computing has evolved considerably with better performance & lighter components. However, the only limitation of a laptop is its battery. Intensive operating systems and modern applications can be somewhat of a drain on battery power thus averaging four to five hours of continuous usage time. Here are a few quick tips you could implement to increase the battery life of your laptop and perform longer.

1. Defrag regularly

Defragmentation is recommended on a quarterly basis to arrange data more efficiently thus making the hard drive work less to access the data. The quicker the moving hard drive works lesser is the load placed on the battery. Thus, your battery can last longer.

2. Unplug external devices

USB devices are the biggest drainers of battery power. Unplug all external devices like an external mouse, PC cards, Wi-Fi, external speakers, Bluetooth and even an attached iPod if you are not using them.

3. Lower the lights

Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance. Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

4. Disable sounds

Mute speakers and try avoiding the use of multimedia software to maximize the battery life when not in use.

5. Empty the CD/DVD Drives

Even if you don’t intend to use it, don’t leave any CD/DVDs as leftovers in the drives. A spinning drive sucks battery power like a sponge.

6. Minimize programs running in the background

End background applications that are not vital (iTunes, Desktop Search, etc). Monitor the resource usage through a which brings up the Windows Task Manager. Disable unnecessary programs running as start-ups by launching the System Configuration Utility from Run > Type: CMD > Type: Msconfig (Tab: Startup). Uncheck the programs which you don’t want to launch and reboot the computer once.

7. Prefer Hibernate not Standby mode

Although placing a laptop in Standby mode saves a bit of power with the ability to instantly resume, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the Hibernate mode does.