[tags]extend, laptop, battery, windows, vista, xp, save, save battery, extend battery life, life, prolonged, lockergnome, chris pirillo, internetnut[/tags]

If you are a power user like me, your laptop is one of the most important essentials for you. Whether it’s connected to the internet or not you seem to always need your laptop for one or more reasons.

Of course, if yoiu are a power user, an especailly depending on the make/brand of your laptop, and depending on what you are doing your battery life can be drained rather quickly.

There are ways to tweak your batter life in your laptop, not by changing the battery, or indeed changing your laptop, but changing some risk free easy settings inside either Windows XP or Windows Vista.

For the example I will be explaining how to do this in Windows XP, although it is very similar for Windows Vista.

In Windows XP go to Start, and click on Control Panel. Then click on Performance and Maintenance. Under ‘or pick a Control Panel icon’ select Power Options. You can change these settings from time to time depending on what you are doing or where you are going and how long you will need to use your laptop for.

If you are doing a presentation under ‘Power Schemes’ change it to presentation. Click apply and OK. You can also select Laptop/Portable. The best choice I feel however, is if you select Max Battery. These will change the settings to something convinient for long laptop use without charge.

If you do not want to follow any of the schemes then create your own settings. You can select when to turn off the monitor, when to turn off the hard disk(s) and when to go into standby.

If you have any questions about this or comments let me know at dcrone*nospam*@inbox.com, which is the usual e-mail address. (remove *nospam* from e-mail address)