1. DISCONNECT EVERYTHING
The first big drain on your laptop’s battery life is going to be any peripherals you have connected. So the first thing you want to do is disconnect any devices you have plugged into the USB ports. If you’re using an external mouse, keyboard, or hard drive, you definitely want to disconnect them. They draw a lot of power.2. LOWER BRIGHTNESS
The next biggest draw on your laptop's battery will be the screen itself. So the next thing you want to do is to lower your screen’s brightness down to 50%. To lower your screen’s brightness, simply go over here to the search box. Open the search box, and type in brightness. Then click on change brightness level. The display brightness controls will come up. Go ahead and lower them to 50%. 50% is really where you want to be. You can lower it further, but anything below 50% is not going to save that much more battery. 50% is a good place to start.3. TURN OFF BACKLIGHTING
Another big draw on your laptop's battery is the backlit keyboard. You can reduce or even shut off the backlighting of the keyboard temporarily to save battery power. The easiest way to do this is first to locate the function key on your keyboard. It’s that FN key on the lowest row of your keyboard. Hold the function key down, and then locate the proper function key on the top row of keys. The top row of keys on your laptop’s keyboard usually has images printed on them that indicate what functions they serve. So for example, on my customized EZ Laptop by ASUS, if I hold down the function key, the FN key, and press F4, it will lower the keyboard’s backlighting. And if I continue to press F4, it will turn the backlighting off completely. Then, if I hold down the function key and press F5, the keyboard’s backlighting will come back on. Now on your laptop, the backlighting controls might be different keys. You can either look at the images printed on the keys to figure out which key does the job, or you can type your laptop model into Google to find the right set of keys. Just go to Google and type in the laptop model plus the words adjust keyboard backlighting. Turning off the keyboard backlighting temporarily will save a tremendous amount of power.4. CLOSE PROGRAMS, APPS, & BROWSERS
The next thing you can do to extend the battery life of your laptop is to take a look at the programs you’re running in the background and turn off as many as you possibly can. Ideally, you just want to run the application you need to use right now. Most importantly, turn off any program that is streaming data. If you’re on an airplane and you’re running trading programs, you are streaming data, and it’s going to drain the battery quickly. If you are indeed trading and running on battery, a good strategy might be to log into the trading platform every few minutes. Look at the prices, jot them down, and then log back out. Watching YouTube videos or Netflix is also streaming, so turn those off. If you want to watch a movie while you’re traveling, I suggest you download the movies to your hard drive before you leave so your streaming doesn’t drain the battery. Next, you want to close as many extra applications and browsers as you can… anything you’re not using. Having a dozen browsers open actually does drain the battery. You can see which apps are using the most power and which apps are the most drain on your battery by going to the Search, typing in battery, go to the Battery Saver settings. Right here, there’s a link: See which apps are affecting your battery life. Go ahead and click on that, and this little application will tell you which programs drain the most battery in the background. So for me, TradeStation 9.5 happens to be a big drain on my battery, and that’s because I’m streaming data. Also, Slack, which is a messenger service much like Skype, for me is a big drain on the battery. And then you can see Chrome and Skype. So, you want to make sure when you’re shutting down programs that you’re not using, first go with the ones that are draining the most battery. Obviously, one that’s streaming is going to drain a lot of battery.5. TURN ON BATTERY SAVER MODE
The next big thing you can do to preserve your battery while traveling is to put your laptop into the Battery Saver Mode. Battery Saver will throttle your background apps and actually limit the amount of power that your processor uses. The fastest way to turn the Battery Saver Mode on is to go over to the bottom on the right, click on the battery, and then move the slider all the way over to Best Battery Life. That will give you the best possible life.6. ADJUST SLEEP SETTING
One last tack you can do to preserve power is to tell your computer to go to sleep faster when it’s not in use. The simplest way to do that is just to go over here to the Search box type in power, and search right here: Power and sleep settings. Go ahead and click the Power and Sleep Settings. And under Screen, where it says On battery, turn off the screen, you could change it to as little as two or three or five minutes. This way when it’s running on battery, and you step away for a second, it’s going to shut down the screen when it’s not in use to preserve that power.LAPTOP BATTERY HACKS QUICK REVIEW
So let’s do a quick review of the top six things you can do to potentially double your laptop’s battery life. They are:- Unplug all your external devices, like your wireless mouse or your external hard drive.
- Lower the screen’s brightness level to 50%.
- Turn off the keyboard backlighting.
- Turn off any applications that are streaming, such as trading platforms, YouTube, or Netflix, and then turn off any application that you are not using right now, like extra browser tabs or Skype.
- Set the laptop in Battery Saver Mode. And lastly…
- Set your laptop screen to go to sleep in one to five minutes.
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Thanks for watching, and if you haven’t already, please feel free to download our Complete Guide to Trading Computers by clicking the link. This guide is packed with great tips so you can totally optimize your trading experience. My name’s Eddie Z. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.
