Batteries have come a long way through history. With the advent of the first battery, which consisted of paper and salt water along with metals, these energy-harvested marvels have evolved in capacity by thousands of folds. Through science, we’ve innovated and experimented with the battery, using different metals, alloys and materials until we found what type of metal held the charge for the right task at hand.
The most popular batteries today are called lead acid, alkaline, and lithium ion. There are many more types, but we will only discuss the above in this article. Lead acid batteries are mainly used in heavy-duty applications, such as car batteries. They have amazing longevity and can recharge if latency is allowed. However, due to their toxic liquid nature, they are impractical in small consumer applications that we carry in our pockets every day. Alkaline batteries have dominated the market for decades due to their reliability, stability, and charge duration. They are much safer than lead acid batteries and are well suited for small electronic devices. Last but not least is the lithium ion battery. The lithium ion battery is the technological marvel of modern civilization. It combines the best qualities of old technologies and improves on them. It has excellent charge life, rechargeability, and is extremely durable. Approximately 99% of all portable electronic devices are powered by the Lithium Ion battery and as such we will be talking about conserving FULL Lithium Ion battery life. Take note of why I said in general; the way you use the battery for the FIRST time will determine how much he likes you during the rest of your quality time together. So be nice! It’s powering your expensive equipment~
The first step to conserving battery life takes, in essence, the end of the last paragraph. How you use your battery the first (few) times will determine how it behaves later on. To make it easy to describe what you should do with your battery, I’ll walk you through it step by step below.
1.) Whatever you do, don’t turn on your laptop just because you’re impatient, or because you want to “do the boring logging now so you don’t have to do it later” (I’ve already done that). Put the battery in (if it came separately) and give it a FULL, FULL charge.
2.) See step 1
3.) See Step 2 (I can’t stress this enough)
4.) Use your battery steadily, but let it drain completely to the point that it won’t power anything anymore.
5.) Give it a FULL and COMPLETE charge with the appliance turned off
6.) Now you can use your battery however you want, but following the steps above from time to time will help improve the life and consistency of your battery.
The reason you want to follow the steps above is because your battery thrives on consistency. Sporadic bursts of use and charging interrupt the use cycle and slowly invisibly damage the battery. Nurturing your battery in the first few days will help keep it strong for hundreds, perhaps thousands of charges and uses to come. Some people buy battery dischargers for step 4, but honestly I think my step will suffice. There is really no need to spend your money on it.
Most of the power consumption comes from the computer’s CPU, and as it works harder, so does the battery. Knowing this, you now probably understand that the battery drains more during boot up. To improve startup efficiency, you can uninstall anything you don’t need or disable a variety of unnecessary startup processes. Doing this will put less strain on your CPU during startup and also on your battery. It will also improve overall battery charging because you have fewer useless idle processes to steal power from the CPU and battery. Plus, your laptop’s sleep and hibernation modes allow you to avoid power-hungry startups, and since your laptop boots so much faster in these modes, you’ll be able to start with whatever you need. do.
Heat is one of the laptop’s worst enemies, aside from your morning coffee. A laptop that produces excessive heat drains the battery surprisingly faster than one that runs very cold. The reason behind this is that as the computer heats up, the fan spins much harder to cool down the internal components. This in turn drains the battery faster. Not much can be done if a laptop had poor internal ventilation while new. This could be for a variety of reasons; cramped internal components, high-performance CPUS and GPUS, poor-quality materials, or poor ventilation locations. The little you can do, however, is clean the inside of your computer with compressed air. Dust buildup inside a laptop traps heat and makes it difficult for fans to cool internal components. I have seen temperature drops of at least 5-7 degrees Celsius after using my dusty laptops and slight (but noticeable) increases in battery life.
One of the most overlooked things about battery life is the WIFI card. Thousands of people leave their WIFI cards on and never bother to turn them off. Your laptop actively searches for internet signals while your WIFI card is on and this drains your battery unnecessarily. So if you’re in a place with no usable WIFI signals, turn off your wireless card, it really does make a world of difference. A signal isn’t going to magically appear out of nowhere, unless someone is plugging in a phone. Even with that, it’s likely encrypted.
Finally, get a solid state drive (SSD). SSDs have no moving parts compared to the high RPM metal drives in most modern laptops today. Since it has no moving parts, it consumes less heat and power. Also, your laptop will work like you can’t imagine. The speed advantages of an SSD over an HDD are monstrous.
Although I have tried to make this article as detailed as possible, I welcome any suggestions to improve it. If there is anything that may be questionable, I will investigate the matter further and adjust my article accordingly. All in all, if you’ve made it this far, enjoy a happy life with your battery.