When storing a lithium-ion battery, try to store it at 60 degrees Fahrenheit and with approximately a 40 percent charge. The charge will prevent the battery from going to sleep and never waking up. This explains why new mobile devices are often partially but not fully charged when you buy them.

So far, everything I've discussed applies to any mobile computing device. But you can do a lot more when the device in question is a laptop. Aside from dimming your display and turning off radios,you can turn off a host of other hardwareAccu Asus U30, such as back-lit keyboards, FireWire ports, Wi-Fi, serial and composite ports, webcams, sound and auxiliary video controllers, and your optical drive (if your laptop even has one). The power savings when disabling any one device might not be great, but disable a bunch and it can make difference.

The spillage issue was also addressed in 1812 with the invention of the Zamboni pile—also known as the Duluc Dry Pile—invented by Giuseppe Zamboni. Constructed from thousands of sheets of alternating silver and zinc foilAccu Asus VivoBook S400CA, the Zamboni pile's manganese oxide electrolyte was held in place with honey and the entire affair was crammed into a long glass jar and insulated with pitch. This construction gives Zamboni piles potential outputs in the Kilowatt range, which makes modern versions very handy in a variety of military and scientific applications.

While NiMH cells hold up to 40 percent more charge, exhibit a weaker memory effect, relatively inexpensive, and more environmentally-friendly, they unfortunately self-discharge like mad. A stored NiMH battery may lose as much as 20 percent of its total charge thefirst dayand up to 4 percent of its chargeevery week hence. Sure, some LSD (low self-discharge) variants of the NiMH formula are available but cut back capacity by 20 percent in order to do soAccu Asus p31jg-ro199x. NiMH batteries also have a reputation for being heat sensitive which drastically shortens their operational lives.

So if your device's electrical capacity is finite, the way to make it last longer is to reduce its consumption. And that means turning things down or off, as you do with the lights and appliances in your house. You already knew that, of course—but maybe you didn't know how much stuff there is to turn down or off.

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Battery manufacturers like Duracel and Energizer, however, frown on this practice citing potential corrosion or seal damage from the moisture without any additional battery life. Instead the company recommends storing batteries between 68 and 78 degrees F at 35 to 65 percent humidity. Under those conditions, alkalines should last between five and seven years, carbon zinc for three to five years, and lithium cells for 10 to 15 years on the shelf.

Lead-acid batteries also excel at holding a charge, which makes them ideally suited for intermittent utilities like railroad crossing signals where a single battery may be used for up to 25 years. and where weight is not an issue—sayAccu Toshiba Satellite A105, as emergency backups for hospitals, telecommunications centers, and server farms—lead-acid batteries are routinely employed given their long shelf-life. The US Navy even employs enormous lead-acid batteries to drive the electric propulsion of its modern nuclear submarines.

Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries are very similar to their NiCd cousins in their construction with both using nickel oxyhydroxide cathodes and both producing a terminal voltage of 1.2V. NiMH batteries however replace the cadmium anode with one made from an hydrogen-absorbing alloy made from a mix of rare earths (either by combining lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and praseodymium or by using an amalgamation of nickelAccu Toshiba Satellite L10, cobalt, manganese, and/or aluminium) and use an alkaline electrolyte, typically potassium hydroxide. This grants the NiMH both 200-300 percent the capacity of a NiCd and a current output close to that of a Lithium-ion cell. In some high-performance applications the anode may also be made from a titanium/zirconium compound which boost its capacity further.

The lead-acid wet cell reigned as the dominant—well, only—form of rechargeable battery for 40 years. In 1899, Swedish inventor, Waldemar Jungner, devised the Nickel-Cadmium cell. His Ni-Cd wet cells were more powerful and more sturdy than older lead-acid format. Unfortunately, very few people in America had ever heard of Jungner or his work (though he did eventually start his own battery company in 1906), so the discovery went widely unnoticedAccu Toshiba Satellite E305. It wasn't until 1902, when Thomas Edison created his own Nickel-cadmium cell, that the technology gained a foothold in the US.

LCO batteries offer numerous advantages over nickel-based cells. Lithium cells are smaller, lighter, more energetically dense, and able to operate within a much wider temperature range than other rechargeable—essential features in high-tech, high-drain, gadgets and mobile devices. What's more, lithium-ion batteries have a much lower self-discharge rate than other secondary batteries. LCO's lose just 5-10 percent of their charge per month, compared to more than 30 percent a month for NiMH cells and 10 percent a month for NiCd batteries.

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The tricks for maximizing your lithium-ion battery’s useful lifespan—that is, the number of times you can recharge it before it no longer accepts a charge—are pretty basic. Three things will prematurely age a lithium-ion battery: consistently draining it to the automatic shutdown point, exposing it to heat, and overcharging/overvoltage-charging. That last practice is actually dangerous and can lead to fire or even an explosion.

The most obvious battery-draining component that you can turn down—or leave off when it’s not in use—is the display. Reduce the brightness as far as you can, and turn it off when you don’t need it. Reduce idle period in the automatic shutoff setting. The more aggressive you are about curtailing your display’s energy use, the more battery(such asAccu Acer Aspire 9010) life you’ll conserve. If you’re in dire straits, manually shut it off as quickly and as often as possible.

So far, everything I’ve discussed applies to any mobile computing device. But you can do a lot more when the device in question is a laptop. Aside from dimming your display and turning off radios,you can turn off a host of other hardware, such as back-lit keyboards, FireWire ports, Wi-Fi, serial and composite ports, webcams, sound and auxiliary video controllers, and your optical drive (if your laptop even has one). The power savings when disabling any one device might not be great, but disable a bunch and it can make difference.

It all boils down to this: To extend run time, turn stuff down or off. To extend a lithium-ion battery’s lifespan, don’t consistently drain it to low levels or regularly expose it to heat. Store the battery(such asAccu Acer Aspire 4250) at 60 degrees with a 40 percent charge. Batteries are all about freedom, so try to develop good habits without killing the joy.

The number of recharge cycles you’ll get from your lithium-ion battery drops with how far you drain the battery regularly. You can get as many as 5000 cycles if you discharge it to the 90 percent level each time, and perhaps only a few hundred if you habitually run it down to 10 percent before recharging. Don’t go crazy trying to stay tethered all the time. But you might want to break yourself of the habit of waiting until the low battery(such asAccu Acer Aspire E1-531) warning lights up before you plug in.

Now let’s dive into the software. I already talked about running only one application at a time, but you may also be running dozens of convenient, but unessential background processes—software updaters, printer and scanner control panels, online storage service apps, and more. To turn off unnecessary processes, use the Windows find function as described above. But this time, typetask manager. Alternatively, right-click the taskbar and selectStart Task Manager, or press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select the same item. Once the Windows Task Manager dialog box appears, select theProcessestab and peruse the process names and descriptions.

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