How To Improve Laptop Battery Life Discussion

[Jerry Jackson]

Everyone who has ever used a laptop knows that sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when your laptop battery is about to die. Battery life is still one of the single most important issues that people consider when purchasing a new notebook. And why not? Battery life is the key factor to the mobility of a laptop computer. Sure, we all like thin and light PCs but even the thinnest, lightest laptop is nothing but a paperweight when the battery dies.

In some cases you might be able to turn to an extended battery for your laptop, but as manufacturers race to make thinner and lighter laptops, many of these "ultrabooks" have integrated batteries that cannot be removed or replaced without completely disassembling the laptop. So what can you do to squeeze out a few extra minutes (or even a few extra hours) of battery life? With a few minutes worth of simple changes, you can easily get your work done without constantly looking for the nearest power outlet.

Read the full content of this Article: How To Improve Laptop Battery Life

[Ferrari353]

I did not know that the optical drive is a power hog. You learn something new every day
Thanks for the guide

[Dreamycreamy]

Sometimes my laptop says optical drive power on

Even though there is no disk in there, is there a way to turn this off? As surely this is using and draining power for no reason...

[homank76]

That was a good read...thanks for the review.

[Jerry Jackson]

Sometimes my laptop says optical drive power on

Even though there is no disk in there, is there a way to turn this off? As surely this is using and draining power for no reason...

If your laptop uses a slot-loading optical drive then sometimes those are set to automatically turn on and check for a disc at various times (such as during Windows startup, or wake from sleep) but your drive shouldn't be doing anything if it's a tray-load drive and there is no disc in the drive.

In theory you can disable the optical drive via the Device Manager (Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, and select Device Manager under "Devices and Printers"). Just right click on the drive and select "Disable."

If the drive is disabled under the Device Manager it shouldn't be powering up completely (although it will draw "some" amount of power as long as it is connected). Drawing "some" power while idle isn't a problem but optical drives consume a great deal of power when the drive spins up, the laser is reading/writing data, and the CPU and GPU are working to display whatever is on the disc.

[Apollo13]

I disagree with turning off the automatic updates for battery life simply because I figure most people will totally forget about it if they don't get at least the toasters you get from "Notify but don't download". Unless a drastic difference in battery life can be shown, which I doubt. But generally, yes, all the main points are covered.

[micahmatthew]

This is all extremely basic; figure people on these forums already know these things.

It does cover the basics though; for non-geeks.

And does a good job of it.

[Jerry Jackson]

This is all extremely basic; figure people on these forums already know these things.

It does cover the basics though; for non-geeks.

And does a good job of it.

Yes, this article isn't really intended for our forum regulars (although sometimes even the basic stuff can serve as a helpful reminder).

We get some substantial traffic from Google searches for basic tech advice like this so we like to update our beginner-level help articles every year or two just so those newcomers get the latest and most relevant information when they visit NBR.