Tech Tip : Maximise Your Window Laptop Battery Life

Did you know that you can configure different power plans on your laptop so you can optimise your battery life, depending on your usage?  

You can optimise the power plans for your laptop and tune them to usage, so you can extend the battery life if you need to prolong usage, but require less processing power, or sacrifice battery charge to maximise performance for intensive activity. 

Here is how to do it:

• In Windows, right click on the battery icon (typically bottom right corner of the taskbar
• Select Power Options
• Alternately, open Control Panel, at the top right hand corner change the view to small icons, then select Power Options
• Here you can find three  pre-configured power plans, which are
  • Balanced (Recommended) which is the default
  • Power Saver
  • High Performance
• You can create your own plan tailored to your requirements if the above three are not suitable, you can choose from settings such as:
  • Modifying the sleep timers (when the computer hibernates)
  • Screen Brightness (which can be a significant drain on the battery)
  • Processor power  
• Once you have it optimised for your needs, you can save it and use that configuration

Remember, you can switch your profile at any time to optimise the performance and balance this with power consumption.