- Firstly, try to reduce the screen brightness. It ain't good for you and also the life of battery for its a major battery hog.
- Verify the power saving setting(s) in your Win/Mac and configure it to put off the screen and hard-drive after being idle for some time. Never turn off your hard drive though!
- Always try hibernate over stand by. This actually is a good energy saving feature. Check this out at your wish/risk. Why it's a little risk? See this.
- Never go for a screen saver. Its actually not an energy saver!
- Wireless sensor consumes lot of battery power. Put it off when you are not using the network connection.
- Mute your speakers in laptop when you don't need it. Also turn off/disable the Bluetooth if you don't need it.
- Turn off all the scheduled tasks and don't run multimedia activities for long periods of time.
- Do not plug in the USB devices for a long periods of time. This includes your external/portable hard drives as well.
- Optical drives like CD/DVD or even blu ray in the combo drives these days consume a lot of power. So copy the contents on to the internal hard drive and see them.
- Hard disk also consumes some more power. Reduce hard disk activity by having more RAM.
- Always, fully dis-charge your recharged battery and only then recharge it again several times in a line. This way, your battery performs its best. I do the same.
Note: Over a period of time, any battery would deteriorate. These are just a few tips to increase its life. Hope this helps.
Source: Personal Exp
