Extend Laptop Battery Life by Keeping the Contacts Clean

We’ve posted a few tips to extend your laptop battery life in the past, but this list from FriedBeef is even more comprehensive. The following tips were new to me:

Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

Cut down external devices: USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use. It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.

Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD: As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they’re not actively being used.