Extending your laptop's battery life

Everyone's been there. On an airplane, riding in a car or just sitting outdoors working on a laptop when suddenly the machine shuts off. The inconvenience of losing time is frustrating enough, but the fact that your battery just couldn't last 10 more minutes can be maddening.

There are several steps users can take to milk a few extra minutes out of their laptops. Some of the simpler ones include dimming your screen and running fewer processes when unplugged. Cutting down the number of programs running in the background can put less strain on a laptop's battery, as can removing any external devices, such as a hard drive or mouse.

Other battery-extending steps take a little more foresight. For example, defragging one's laptop regularly puts less demand on a hard drive and battery. Adding RAM will enable a computer to use less virtual memory, which too can drain a battery quickly.

Like so many things in life, laptop batteries don't last forever. But with a few adjustments, users can extend their charges -- hopefully long enough to get the job done.