Originally Posted by Rossclot

-Clean the crap out of where ever you laptop sucks in/expels air

-Cold Laptop= Fast Laptop. Be creative.

This could be true; My Laptop usually is heated up after 2-3 hours of usage. But I don't listen/feel any major in/out movement of air and the area where put my palms in while typing is actually hot/warm atm.

Don't always keep it plug in unless you don't care about your battery life, or you are charging your battery. It kills the battery faster.

Originally Posted by Stan

Don't always keep it plug in unless you don't care about your battery life, or you are charging your battery. It kills the battery faster.

I think he meant take the battery out while keeping it plugged in.

also try going to start menu, run and run msconfig
go to the tab with startup
hit disable all
and restart your computer.
This will eliminate all programs running at startup

Originally Posted by Stan

Don't always keep it plug in unless you don't care about your battery life, or you are charging your battery. It kills the battery faster.

Modern laptops are designed with this in mind. Once the battery is charged, the circuit switches and the laptop directs power away from the battery. You don't need to worry about this at all.

It may be designed with this in mind, but battery still get heated up regardless, and will result in lower battery life....try it and see. My battery is still working for 2-3 years, but i have one which is a modern laptop which has less than half hour left, doing the exact same thing recommended above by rossclot.

Originally Posted by Stan

It may be designed with this in mind, but battery still get heated up regardless, and will result in lower battery life....try it and see. My battery is still working for 2-3 years, but i have one which is a modern laptop which has less than half hour left, doing the exact same thing recommended above by rossclot.

The laptop gets warm when it's running, this is unavoidable... but if you're saying the battery warms up when the laptop is off but plugged in, then that's incorrect.

I've been keeping my battery in my laptop and running it plugged in for weeks at a time (for almost 4 years now) and it still lasts for more than three hours when I need it.

You must have a bad battery, bad laptop, or both.

Originally Posted by Taunton

Modern laptops are designed with this in mind. Once the battery is charged, the circuit switches and the laptop directs power away from the battery. You don't need to worry about this at all.

Are you sure?
Because I've noticed a considerable decline in my battery life and the technicians told me it's because I keep it plugged in all the time while the battery's in the laptop...

Originally Posted by lawleypop

Are you sure?
Because I've noticed a considerable decline in my battery life and the technicians told me it's because I keep it plugged in all the time while the battery's in the laptop...

Yes, I'm sure. Any laptop purchased within the last 6 or so years has the ability to stop feeding power to the battery once it is charged. I suppose I could be wrong, but I don't think Dell has exclusive rights to this relatively simple technology (I know my laptop has it because it says so in the user manual).

Your battery life can go down for a number of reasons. For example, if you keep your battery charged in your plugged-in laptop all the time, but never use the battery, it's life will degrade. You're supposed to "exercise" your battery, discharging it and recharging it once every two weeks.

Other things like not defragging your hard drive make your hardware less efficient, making your battery work harder and discharge more quickly. Computers with more RAM will have better battery life because they are more efficient.

Tips for maintaining battery life:

- exercise your battery
- keep your hard drive defragged
- keep your laptop cool (overheating will kill the battery)
- never let your battery completely run out
- use "hibernate" and not "standby". Hibernate actually shuts down the computer, wheras standby uses energy

Also, don't forget that batteries will decline in usability naturally. Sometimes they just age and don't work as well as they used to. My batteries (both my main battery and my backup) used to last for over 6 hours four years ago. Today they last for about 3 hours or so.

Holy shit, what kind of batteries do you friggin have.

Even when I got my laptop new, I don't think the battery lasted more than 3-4 hours.

Now I'm lucky if it goes for an hour and a half.

Originally Posted by lawleypop

Holy shit, what kind of batteries do you friggin have.

Model # Dell8506... they're 9-cell I believe... not 100% sure though, and I don't have time to look it up

Take the base off your laptop and see if your fans are working properly. When I had a POS windows laptop, a small plastic piece got stuck in my main fan preventing it from spinning and blowing air out. It nearly killed my entire system.